Boston fans are ready to slit their wrists over the team's 0-6 start, and even business newspapers are having fun with it. Sox aficionados will want to see where this snippet leads to.
At this point, there’s no sense in pretending – the 2011 Boston Red Sox are shaping up as an unparalleled disaster. On pace for the worst record in baseball history, the Red Sox have been a failure in multiple ways, up and down the lineup. Hitters expected to contend for MVP honors have instead struggled even to get above the Mendoza Line, and the team as a whole is hitting just .181. Ace Jon Lester, who struck out 225 in each of the last two seasons, has recorded all of nine strikeouts on the season, and is still without a win. The Sox were just swept by the Cleveland Indians, for the love of Todd Benzinger. In short, things in Boston have never been worse.
Personally, this is the condition in which Noman finds the Red Sox most lovable. For years, the Sox were his #2 team--after his lifelong addiction, the San Francisco Giants, which rewarded Noman for his years of dedication with a World Series Championship last year. (Parenthetically, prior to last year's rousing conquest of baseball's pinnacle, the Giants had last won the world series when Noman was in the womb!) Who can forget Butch Hobson twitching with nerves in the home dugout; or Manny Ramirez sitting out a road game so that he could visit New York, and then saying that he wanted to play for Boston's hated rival. Who couldn't appreciate the sheer artistry of the way the Red Sox built up and dashed fans' hope throughout the season, and even within each game. But then, the Red Sox got filthy rich from cable television network NESN, hired wiz-kid Theo Epstein straight out of Yale, and began spending like their odious enemies in the Bronx. They sacrificed Nomar Garciaparra to the gods of baseball, and were rewarded with their first World Series championship since the Bambino roamed its outfield. Noman has never liked the Yankee's way of buying championships by plucking other teams' stars. And, a Philistine is a Philistine, whether in NY, or in Boston.
In a footnote to this brief history, Manny Ramirez, the Hall of Fame star who led Boston to its only two championships in the past 90+ years, retired today after being contacted by Major League Baseball's drug office. Noman says, stuff that in your Barry Bonds, Red Sox Nation.
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