It kind of sucks in this day and age that as a Boston sports fan you have to start any complaint by addressing our region’s recent success. I’m definitely sick of it. I can’t blog about a player, a team, or anything else related to our teams without first saying “look, I get we’ve racked up enough hardware the last two decades and change to make Tim the Tool Man Taylor blow six loads, but…” The bottom line is that it is fair to hold past and present success as your standard as a fan or consumer. Not regardless of, but due to, recent success, we’re allowed to fucking gripe about the state of our teams when they fall off that path to championships. So consider this my preface for this blog. I’m sure I’ll have to do it again less I’m hit with a million O QUIT YOUR FUCKING COMPLAINING ERULDUWTYTIEO.

This Red Sox franchise, in its current state, is the most unlikeable Boston sports franchise of my lifetime BY FAR. I honestly can’t think of an argument against that. Sure, the Jacobs Brothers basically operated as the mob throughout the last part of the 20th century, but the B’s still made moves as often as possible to try and eek out some wins despite their penny pinching owners. The Patriots were an unmitigated disaster for the first third of my life (that was a tough one to say), but that was less them being unlikeable and more Kraft still figuring out how to put together a football franchise. Not exactly Rollercoaster Tycoon. The Celtics were an atrocity for most of the 90s but basketball can sort of swing that way sometimes via the draft lottery/the draft in general, one or two bad signings, NBA players hating multiple feet of snow, etc.

None of that. Noneeeee of that. Compares to this Red Sox franchise, which is to say, for the most part, this Red Sox ownership. Now, Chaim Bloom and the front office are not completely blameless. Why, do you ask? Well they could simply walk the fuck away from their jobs. They don’t have to be the Fenway Sports Group’s trigger-men. They choose to be. So yes, fuck them too. But in the end it is indeed the ownership’s decisions and methods that have got us here.

Things started out well with John Henry and his gang. Despite the fact that he reminded me of “the stiff” that was hanging around Sigourney Weaver in the first “Ghostbusters” movie, what with his sickly pallor and awkward way about him, he turned things around initially. They honestly seemed like they wanted to win. Which was cool. We hadn’t done that, until 2004, since 1918. So ya that was sick, we liked that. We won again in 2007, 2013, and 2018. Each one felt special in its own way. We had now won across a couple of generations of Red Sox teams. We were (we thought) here to stay. In reality, we were the fuck not.

It starts with pure miserdom. Yes, that is indeed a word derived from “miser”. Read a book. The Fenway Sports Group, led by Henry and Tom Werner – side note: did Lucchino die? I honestly don’t know – simply have decided they are broke. They aren’t of course. The Red Sox are worth more than they ever have been. Between all his interests Henry is worth about $2.5b alone. So ya, he’s just fine. They’ve just simply decided they no longer want to pay for any kind of talent. Which is to say, they don’t want to pay to win. As baseball players generally don’t feel so great about playing for free this is an issue. There were smaller examples of this that peeved me but that I can’t remember out of pure frustration. I know that’s a shitty argument but there’s good reason. And that reason is Mookie Betts. A home-grown franchise player, once-in-a-lifetime talent who they simply jetisoned rather than spend the cash, which they definitely had, to keep him. And before the two usual dumbassed fucking arguments come in let me address them off the bat. 1.) There is NO PROOF Mookie Betts EVER said, thought, believed, uttered, considered or whatever else that he didn’t want to “be here”. None. Zilch. That’s a fabrication. Just one of those, “Ya but I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who talked to him.” No they did not. I don’t know if people pass this idea around to make themselves feel better about losing him, which I empathize with, or honestly believe it. But there’s nothing there. The second is some bullshit about him not wanting to take a hometown discount for “not much less” money. Ok, ok. So if someone offered you ten million dollars. And another person offered you twenty million dollars. You’d take the twenty right? Who cares how much more or less. The Dodgers were willing to pay him more to play fucking baseball, which he does really well! The ownership did not give a fuck about keeping him. That’s the bottom line. Deal with it.

After that deal that sent Mookie to LA it became REALLY hard to root for this franchise. The same team that we cried with after losing to the team from New York that hasn’t won since God knows when in the 03′ “Cowboy Up” year was now just unlikeable. We didn’t even recognize it. From naked pull ups and fried chicken to not having a soul. And it’s all because they simply don’t care about baseball anymore. I get teased a bit for being somewhat of an anglophile. I like Britsh TV, some music, and books. But at least I don’t stop caring about my friends here because of it. John Henry did. He bought a soccer team in England and simply stopped giving a shit about the Red Sox. He doesn’t want to spend any money that might, I don’t know, help the team. And this is the most basic level, who we are supposed to root for? When we root for the Red Sox to succeed we are rooting for their ownership to succeed, which makes my stomach turn. If you want further evidence, look at the dumpster fire of a team we trotted out for last year’s shortened season. I couldn’t name a single reliever. Our starters were ass. Our lineup was deteriorating by the minute. And no one at the top cared. And yet we’re supposed to still cheer.

Yesterday marked yet another moment in “fuck these guys” history. They traded Andrew Benentendi to the Royals in a three-team trade and received back a bag of baseballs. Please don’t start with defending this trade. Somewhere along the lines, I don’t know where, maybe it was as everything Belichick permeated our sports culture, Boston sports fans decided they were all the smart guys in the room. They decided that “this deal makes sense” for every fucking deal ever made. And they don’t. Not with the Red Sox in particular. We traded a 26 year old defensive stud who once hit in the .290s with I believe 16 dingers for jack shit. That is not a good trade. I get he hasn’t played up to snuff recently but HE’S 26. So no, this was not a good move. No, this deal does not make sense. No, this team does not care about you.

This ownership group simply does not want to spend a dime, in Mookie’s case, or consider spending a dime in the future, in Benintendi’s case. They don’t care about putting together a quality team. They don’t care about winning. And yet we’re supposed to still tune in? And show up to the ballpark? Somehow we are supposed to still root for such a loathsome group of individuals, and it’s almost impossible at this point.

The worst part about this whole thing is that I don’t see this turning around any time soon. The Sox are too valuable for the Fenway Sports Group to sell any time soon. And they aren’t going to start caring any time soon. So we’re saddled for mediocrity at best for the next few decades.

Let’s just hope it isn’t 84 years.

-Joey B.

GIGANTIC DISCLAIMER: When I was in high school the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were raging and people my age were getting hardcore involved in politics left and right. I swore I wouldn’t get involved then because what the fuck did we know at 15? I contend I was right then. As I got older I swore I would never, ever, ever, ever, ever get involved with politics because I contended, and still do to a point, that it’s just made up of adults arguing like children and insulting each other and is just a fucking crock of shit. I also contend that is, to an extend, still true. But I just can’t not say anything anymore. After 31 years this is my breaking point.

Generally speaking, as a policy Red put in place and held up by tastes of the bloggers themselves, politics is not the forte of The 300s. There are smarter, more concisely educated people that can talk about the state of things better than we can, for the most part. But the events of yesterday kind of warrants some sort of reaction from just about everyone with a keyboard. Silence at this point is deafening.

Yesterday a large group or “mob” of enraged Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building. Possibly the most defining symbol of our nation and what it stands for – freedom, democracy, free speech, and at the most basic level an organized way of doing things – was swarmed and beset upon by these maniacs. They did so on the ground that this whole past election was a lie. That the sitting president could not be removed from office via “fraud.” Rationality be damned, despite the Republican VP and the Republican House Majority Leader having conceded that the election was legit, hence why they showed the fuck up to make this thing official, they the people were going to do whatever it was that was necessary to not let that hearing take place. And it resulted in a deadly, disgusting display of entitlement and moral vacancy. Now, it’s important, I think, to identify who these people were, in their hearts of hearts.

1.) Most if not all represent a group of people who are violently racist. A set of gallows was set up on the Capitol steps and two of these jackasses reenacted the murder of George Floyd on the front steps.
2.) They most likely are unemployed as it was early afternoon on a Tuesday when they decided to attack.
3.) They effuse completely unproven, false conspiracy theories that basically state a secret, shadow group of business and political leaders are trying to bring down Trump.
4.) They committed treasonous, seditious acts against the federal government and should be persecuted as such.

Now note a few things about those four points. Firstly, I didn’t really insert my political beliefs, did I? I said nothing about conservatives vs. liberals, left vs. right blah blah. Nope. Because fuck all that. This was a group of angry, violent dickheads who decided to attack our nation’s capital that’s it. I also didn’t call them terrorists. Which I might (probably will) take some heat for. To do so would not be exactly accurate and quite frankly it’s giving them too much credit. They pussied out from becoming terrorists. Terrorists would have rolled in with some C4 and a few AK’s and started lighting shit up. (Although there were reports of a couple pipe bombs being found so this could have been even worse than it was) The crew of Paul Blarts apparently guarding the Capitol would have been even more helpless to stop them. No, these were just racist, pathetic, vandals. They were vandals who are just so pathetically (I’ll use that word as much as I want) pissed off that they only have two weeks left to be told they matter. Which brings me to my next point.

The reason these kinds of assholes have become not just ubiquitous but completely open about who they are over the last, O I don’t know, four years is because Donald Trump told them that everything they do matters. It’s making a difference! You are right in what you feel and should act on it! You’re on the right side! You see, before this regime these people had these sad, pathetic, nothingness lives (and still do) with no purpose except to suck some oxygen out of the world. And that must have sucked. And they were rightfully angry about how bleak their existence was. Then they woke up one day and had somewhere to channel all of this resentment (that they brought on themselves) and in an echo chamber were given people (black people to be specific), places, and things to hate and new ideas about how lizard people and Al Gore was conspiring against their new leader with the owner of a pizzeria (or some shit like that idk man I don’t read that shit). That’s really who attacked our freedom, which is what happened: A giant mob of low-lives who were so desperate to hang on to the one, tiny, FAKE piece of purpose they’ve ever had. The ultimate McGuffin. “All your rage is fueling our country” was the lie they’d believed and now it’s coming to an end.

The absolutely eye fucking rolling part of this is no matter how many MAGA twitter accounts, people identifying themselves as much on the news, etc. as there were you STILL HAVE PEOPLE SAYING IT WAS A HOAX. You still have people saying it was Antifa, the wolves in hick clothing. Fucking wild. You had half the far right cheering these people on and half of them denying it was their buddies to begin with. Talk about not knowing about the prisoner’s dilemma. Did they forget to suss out in the group chat what the party fucking line was supposed to be?

So, damn you people, go back to your shanties. But first, go to federal fucking prison. I don’t know why you weren’t maced, beaten, and immediately thrown in jail like some other protestors I heard about. But I’ll try and keep this as down the middle as I can. Because again that is what this blog is about. That you are a gigantic piece of shit if you try and disrupt our democratic process. I again repeat:

You are a gigantic piece of shit if you try and disrupt our democratic process.

I could write another 2,000 words on the abject horror the black community felt watching this take place and seeing these (mostly) white protestors getting (mostly) shepherded peacefully out of the hall of our nation’s fucking government, but honestly I don’t feel like I’m the right guy for the job. I’ll just say that it’s bullshit.

One last time: You are a gigantic piece of shit if you try and disrupt our democratic process.

God Bless America, let’s figure it the fuck out,
-Joe