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Yesterday I was walking down the hallway in my basement while my son attempted to kick a small toy soccer ball. He missed, connecting instead with the small toe on my left foot, a toe which is now considerably larger and many more colors than it had been moments earlier. One minute you’re thinking about all the stuff you have to do, the next you’re wondering if all the plans you have that involve walking need to be cancelled. I mention all this to say life is weird. As a part of life, baseball is included in that, and as a part of baseball, so too are the Red Sox. I offer as proof, the past six games.
That’s the theme here, folks. Weirdness. You think the Red Sox are dead in the water, swept by the miserable Orioles with the AL Champion Rays coming to town, the entire season circling the toilet like an all but dead goldfish. But instead, things go the other way. At the sound of the flush, the goldfish somehow wakes up and starts swimming frantically for its life and you have to do a total switch from somberly teaching kids about the fragility of life and the certainty of death, to reaching into a toilet to try and grab a flopping goldfish before it gets sucked down the toilet hole while everyone in the bathroom jumps up and down and screams. This is a lot like the Rays series in ways I’m comfortable letting you figure out on your own.
Are the Red Sox a toilet goldfish resurrected by timely hitting and Nathan Eovaldi’s stout pitching? Maybe. I’ll say this: if this newsletter ever hits it big we won’t be short on t-shirt ideas.
While the Red Sox are doing a 180 degree turn, so are all the baseball writers who ten minute ago were about to flush their toilet. While I always try hard not to overreact to small samples, the temptation is always there. But I always try not to if for no other reason than it’s exceedingly likely that I’ll wake up the next day looking like an idiot, and I can do that on my own, thank you very much.
The nature of a baseball season is always changing. By the time I finish writing this and you finish reading this, it’ll be close to obsolete. As I said on the latest Sox Outsider Podcast, in-season baseball writing has the shelf life of unrefrigerated milk. The next game is always tomorrow, after all, and with each game comes new information, a new vibe, new heroes, new villains, and a new direction. There’s never a shortage of topics to discuss, to write about, or to research, but by the time you’ve done the writing, talked things out, and completed studying, another game has come and gone and your work is, again, obsolete.
The Red Sox play again today at 3pm Eastern. Somehow, mercifully, bizarrely, there is an off-day on Friday before two more against Baltimore to close out the weekend, and then four in Minnesota. The schedule keeps going from there, so we’re going to have to get a hold of things, to grasp onto this sushi belt of a season, to hop on this escalator and ride it to the top without falling off or changing our minds and trying to run down the up side. I suspect we’ll get the hang of it.
None of that is to downplay the excellent series the Red Sox just had. It’s an overstatement to say they saved their season, but they sure saved themselves a lot of consternation and time spent answering impending doom-type questions from reporters over Zoom calls. The much feared starting rotation threw 17 innings and gave up four runs. And that was the four, five, and one starters. Now the Rays aren’t an offensive force, and those teams are coming for the Red Sox soon enough, but so far there isn’t much problem with the starting pitching. The only bad start has been Garrett Richards’ six runs in two innings disaster. By FanGraphs way-way-way-too-early rankings, the Red Sox pitching staff has performed like one of the best in baseball. Perhaps in time they’ll pull their mask off to reveal [crack of lighting] [rumble of thunder] a cackling Zach Godley, but at the very least that hasn’t happened yet.
I don’t often expect a game-tying homer in the bottom of the ninth inning, but Christian Vazquez’s hero turn on Tuesday was a surprise. That’s not to say Vazquez isn’t a good hitter. He’s a very good hitter for a catcher and so far this season he’s been a good hitter for anyone. This is more about the overall team. Was there a time last season, any time, when you really felt hope? I can’t recall ever feeling that emotion about the 2020 Red Sox. Perhaps that was due to the circumstances surrounding the season, the starting and stopping and starting again of the season, the national tragedy unfolding around us all and the unavoidable sadness that permeated everything. But whether they deserved it or not, the 2020 Red Sox were just there. With them it was more like finishing a marathon, rather than attempting a particular time. Just finishing was success. Watching the team play was winning. The score didn’t matter, it was all about survival.
This season isn’t that way, and Vazquez’s homer was a jolt of hope and a reminder that things can be as they were again, both in baseball and in life. It’s a refreshing feeling knowing this team can compete with the AL Champs, knowing they have the skills and fortitude to come back from down in the ninth inning, and not just to know it, but to see it happen in front of my eyes. There are few things that can involuntarily bring you up out of your chair. It’s great to have baseball back. It’s great to have the Red Sox back. Here’s wishing you the ability to jump up quickly when the moment calls for it.
Some superb writing today! I’m feeling the happy Sawx vibes too, and loving it!