After Pap came in and blew the save, there was an immediate exodus from the stands. A young, presumably drunk, very loud and very loyal gentleman a few rows up from us screamed at the departing multitude, "Where you GOING??!!!??!!!" Which, seriously. We debated it amongst ourselves, our butts firmly in our seats. (Well, somebody else's seats. We moved for a better angle to home.) You're leaving in the middle of the 8th with your team only 2 runs behind? Your need to beat the traffic or make it to the T first is such that you don't want to stick around? Or is it that the fandom is so demoralized and so lacking in faith, they see no way the Sox are gonna come from behind in the two innings they have left? Never mind that they were fucking right. It's your team. Stick around to the bitter end. (Ed. note: applies to the whole effin' season; bail now if you want, but if you do, the next time they win a Series (2020?), don't you be telling me you're a Red Sox fan.)
Contrast it to the mood 2/3rds of an inning before, when they brought Papelbon in. Have you been through this at Fenway? The minute "Shipping Up to Boston" starts playing, the whole park is on its feet, screaming and cheering, singing along at the top of their lungs. (Side discussion ensued about how, when they give Bard Papelbon's job [though after the last month, maybe not], it's gonna suck; there'll be no iconic entrance song for us to all scream along to, no punky raw palate cleanser in the ninth after the nauseating treacle of Sweet Caroline in the eighth.) And from the first strike thrown, rhythmic clapping and chanting for every pitch, and every strike, the crowd to its feet again. Electric. You can go from that to, "oh, guess they lost this one, let's go, Maude" in ten minutes? Fuck you.
In the car, we caught Pap's post game remarks, in which he took full responsibility. "It's on me. It's all on me. I got one job, to come in and finish the game, and I didn't do my job. I don't wanna hear any stuff tomorrow about bringing guys in too early or guys not stepping up at the plate. It's on me." Then radio call-in assholes bitching about Tito apparently standing up for Fuckin' Lackey*** the night before. It makes me wonder what all the point of this postgame interviewing is. The fans want/need/like to hear the Papelbons of the world abase themselves and the Titos of the world publicly excoriate their players? Blame Must Be Placed and Shit Must Be Eaten? Do we really really in our hearts think they don't *care* that they're losing and in a humiliating fashion? Do we really think they're just cashing their paychecks and are content to roll around in piles of hundred dollar bills, Scrooge McDuck-style, and don't care that they've lost first place and are losing the wild card? Do we not think that if almost any of them were to get up and speak the true contents of their hearts, they'd say, "Yeah, we suck. All of a sudden, we suck so very very badly, and I can't tell you why or how to make it stop"?
I'm sure they are as perplexed as I am. I'm sure even Fuckin' Lackey would pitch better if only he could remember how.
xoxo
***Fuckin' is officially his first name in my house now. I have lost the ability to call him anything else.
8 comments:
It was kinda poetic that the team rewarded those sticking around with 2K's, a GIDP and a ground out to end it...
I don't consider it bailing to know already (and for quite awhile) that this year's team is stuck-a-fork-in-em done. Think about it--if you're still pitching Lackey in September, you're either 20 games in front or heading for heartbreak. (The bottom third the other day of Aviles, Jackson and McDonald speaks volumes, too). Yes, if I were at a game, I'd already know not to worry about the final score and to just savor the evening like you would a last meal, and those folks leaving are the worst sort of idiots, bandwagon jumpers and sinking-ship-leaving rats. But give a break to the kindly cynics who saw and continue to see all this coming, and those who would like to see that assholes pocketing just short of $16M for one of the most putrid season-long starting pitching performances ever given in a Sox uniform be brought to account. The fact that Tito still pitches the guy is a travesty, and somebody has to say something.
I keep replaying the first week of the season's press conference in my mind, and it sounded then EXACTLY the way these press conferences this week sound now. But all you have to do is look at the box sores, and you don't even have to pay attention to L's and W's to know what's going on: An error last night. Three the night before. One the game before that. Two the game before that.
In fact, since the last clean sheet during their loss last Saturday, they've been averaging almost two per game. And behind that one clean game again, the error totals going back in time were 2, 1, 3, 1, and 2, again an average of almost 2-per. (You have to go back to September 9th and 10th for the most recent back-to-back error-less games).
Writing's been on the wall for some time now. Folks are just now getting around to reading it.
I'm not saying that acknowledging they're not gonna do shit this year is wrong. I myself almost wish I had bought those SRO ALDS tickets, 'cause I think there's less than a 30% chance I'd have ended up standing for 4 hours in 45 degree October weather anyway. It probably would have been amusing to have theoretical tickets to a game that's never gonna take place.
I'm saying that only giving a crap when they're covered in glory, not shit, disqualifies you from ever telling me you're a fan.
And I repeat: do you all think that they *don't* know they are playing absolutely fucking terrible and that they aren't as frustrated, confused, and perplexed as the rest of us? I mean, even Fuckin' Lackey? I joked all last summer about the Felix Hernandez Suicide Watch, but seriously? If you were Fuckin' Lackey and you had to look in the mirror every morning and know they were paying you a shit ton of money to suck in ways few people have ever sucked before, don't you think you would be eyeing your razor blades in a whole new way? The humiliation of that must be unbearable. As for the rest of them and their sloppy, sloppy play and their set up man imploding and all the rest, I dunno. I am not an athlete--you're the athlete Mr Barma, not me--and I never have been, but the only thing I can compare it to is this: there are days I go in the gym and I kill it, set PRs, and feel strong as fuck, and the occasional day where I can't do shit. Never mind setting PRs--I can't do what I easily did the week before for no explicable reason, and it is frustrating and infuriating and, if I'm in the wrong headspace, crushing. I'm just picturing the whole team feeling that same way: I'm sucking, I'm not doing what I know I can do, and I don't understand it, and the more I try to compensate for it, the more I suck. Spiral of defeat.
Longest blog comment EVAH. No one's gonna read this :-)
See, that's where I disagree. I suppose it's really hard to know when a pitcher is trying vs not trying while he's sucking, but you have to look at a career-high ERA that's over TWO RUNS HIGHER than any of his previous seasons and draw certain conclusions. (And that's for $16M, with his opponents' batting average at .310, and pitching into the 8th inning exactly twice all season).
So, yeah, when they commit 20 errors in less than a dozen games when everything's on the line, I do conclude that they're not really trying not to suck as hard as you might think they are.
Okay, agree to disagree. It is against all my knowledge of human psychology (and, yes, I know I'm not a psychiatrist, I just play one on the internet) that a professional athlete like Fuckin' Lackey would "not try" his way to those kind of humiliating numbers. Even if he put himself in a total media blackout with no internet, newspapers, TV, or radio to hear what people are saying about him, he's gotta hear the booing and jeers at the ballpark. I think not trying leads to *mediocre* stats. Catastrophic numbers have gotta come from not knowing how to fix the deep well of suckage you're in.
I could be wrong. People obviously do shit every day I don't understand, so I suppose there *is* the chance Lackey just doesn't care he's making a travesty out of his pitching career.
My favorite moment from his last start was when the boos turned to cheers when Tito came out of the dugout to yank him. (Yeah, he knows). But he just doesn't care. He got his cash, he knows his career is over, and he's just playing out the string because otherwise he doesn't get paid. I've known plenty of over the hill "professionals" in plenty of businesses who have done and continue to do the same. That's human nature, too.
Which, of course, also makes this about Theo (for making the mistake of offering the bogus contract in the first place) and Tito (who keeps throwing him).
Lackey's ERA is 6.49, and he's been put out there for 154 innings. (And counting). The nearest ERA of anyone with that many innings is more than an entire run better. (Bronson at 5.34 for the nostalgics in the audience). This is a suck-ass season of historic proportions, and you absolutely cannot convince me the man is "trying".
And 20 errors in fewer than a dozen games treads mighty thin ice to suggest the rest of the team is trying anymore, either.
Okay, I was googling to try and find out what Lackey's pitch count was when they pulled him Monday to try to make my point and while I couldn't find that (google fu, why have you deserted me?), I found the following:
[quote]Over at the CBS Sports site recap of the game, someone commented "I'd rather watch my parents having sex than watch John Lackey pitch." {/quote]
Which cracked me up so much that I don't care about my point anymore. :-)
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