I was going to begin this column by making fun of how unlucky the Boston Red Sox are. I probably would have used some lame joke about Fenway Park being built on some burial ground, because the Curse of the Bambino (a semi-mythical hoax put on the team after it sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees) and the Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx (Nomar Garciappara recently appeared on the cover of the magazine, which, legend has it, leads to eventual failure) just isn't enough.
I was going to start with that until I read the baseball preview in The Scotsman, a well-respected Scottish daily paper. According to one of the few baseball fans on this soccer-loving island, the upcoming season boils down to three questions. Will the ageing Yankees be able to hold onto their wee crown (aye, he thought so)? Will the Chicago Cubs end their World Series-less drought (nae)? And oddly, the third major question - and the focus of his article - was David Cone.
With all of the free agent signings this summer - the Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies, and Red Sox spent over 500 million collective dollars to sign short stop Alex Rodriguez, pitcher Mike Hampton, and outfielder Manny Ramirez - I wouldn't think that Cone was the man to focus on.
But sure enough, there was the Scot, rambling on about how Cone pitched in the first Major League Baseball game the writer had ever attended. He recalled how Cone had "bamboozled" the Toronto Blue Jays with his slider, which is "among the best in baseball." The Scot felt great sympathy for Cone's nightmare 4-14 2000 campaign (much more sympathy than Yankees owner George Steinbrenner), but reassured me, and thank God for this, that he believes Cone will bounce back this season.
I was as amused as possible at breakfast with this roundup of the baseball season, which is to say the corners of my mouth thought about migrating north. But I did think it was a great way to lead into my baseball preview concerning the very same Red Sox. Unfortunately, mine will make much less use of the veteran pitcher, as I've never witnessed one of Cone's bamboozling performances.
And if this sounds like I'm being an ugly American, simply making fun of anyone from outside the States, then so be it. I'm sure that writer has more knowledge of rugby and snooker in his pinkie finger than I do in my pinkie finger, but I think they ought to leave the baseball writing up to the Americans.
Before I got sidetracked on that article, though, I was going to talk about Boston's Spring Training. The fact is, it couldn't have ended soon enough for the Sox, who mercifully opened the season with a 2-1 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. The problems from the Spring have been well-documented, but I'll document them a little further.
Nomar had wrist surgery, which will cause him to miss 2-4 months. Manny doesn't like left field, which he originally agreed to play before forcing manager Jimy Williams to move him back to right, where he played with the Cleveland Indians (although he started at DH on Opening Day). The slugger, who is hobbling with a hamstring injury, played his 160 million dollar card (wouldn't we all love to have a four of a kind with those) in forcing the move.
And while it is a good thing to keep your RBI machine happy, it takes the Red Sox' best defensive player, Trot Nixon, out of right field, the hardest spot in Boston to play due to the cavernous dimensions and confusing angles. The BoSox were already considered a subpar defensive team, and this won't help, as Ramirez is a subpar fielder.
Finally, resident nut Carl Everett missed the team bus and demanded a trade before patching things up with his nemesis Williams.
What does all this trauma to the three, four, and five hitters in Boston's lineup mean? Other than Garciappara's injury, probably not a whole lot. Except that Garciappara means everything to the team.
Williams can put up with Everett's lunacy as long as he plays like he did last year. Of course, a few conversations with basketball coach Phil Jackson, who coached Dennis Rodman to three NBA titles, couldn't hurt. And how important is right field anyway? If it mattered so much who played there, they wouldn't leave guys like me in charge of it during Little League.
But losing Garciappara is fatal, because he is the heart and soul (pretty trite, but true in this case) of the team. I know Williams has a knack for getting the most out of his players, but he may be overmatched without his shortstop.
Before Red Sox fans start using the debacle that was Spring Training as an excuse for coming up short this year, let me point out that Boston probably wasn't going to make much noise in the American League this year anyway. I may be proved wrong, or lynched upon my return to the States, but Boston will have an extremely difficult time winning even the Wild Card this year - with or without Nomar.
The Yankees, Indians, Chicago White Sox, and Oakland Athletics are all much more complete teams, with the Rangers and Blue Jays only a pitcher or two away from serious contention.
Boston is still poor defensively, and while the pitching staff is improved, it still pales (after Pedro Martinez) to many in the AL. The majority of the lineup, actually everyone except the big three, scares no one. And I have a very strong hunch that Manny's RBI numbers will do a swan impression, as hitting after Chris Stynes, Nixon, and Jason Varitek is much less appetising than Kenny Lofton, Omar Vizquel, and Roberto Alomar (Cleveland's 1-2-3, easily the best in baseball).
So even if a World Series is about as realistic as the completion of the Big Dig, Boston fans still have two things to propel them through yet another summer.
Pedro rules and the Yankees suck.
