What the hell happened?

There was a Saturday Night Live skit a few years ago, where Will Ferrell was playing a dejected Newt Gingrich sitting at a bar the day after he resigned as Speaker of the House. The whole time, he just sits at the bar, shaking his head, saying over and over again, "What the hell happened?"

That's kind of the way I feel about this year's Red Sox season. What the hell did happen? I can't figure it out. Everything was there. There were new owners, new speed, new pitchers, new power, and everyone was happy, right?

I don't know where this team went wrong. If someone at the beginning of the season offered me a team with two twenty game winners, the AL batting champion, a 51-30 record on the road, three of the top four pitchers in the AL, a closer with 40 saves, the third best team ERA in the AL, and the second best team batting average in the league, I probably would have kissed them.

Then if you told me that that same team wouldn't even finish in the top four of the American League, I probably would have laughed at you and called you names because that can't happen. Not even to the Red Sox. Can it?

Well it did. So again, I have to ask, what the hell happened?

The truth is, nothing happened, and that was part of the problem. The Sox just didn't do anything exciting. They were a good baseball team that won 93 games and didn't make the playoffs. Whoopie. Somebody give them a cookie.

Sure, Lowe threw a no hitter, Nomar hit three home runs on his birthday, and Manny won the batting title. So what? Nobody on the team ever actually seemed all that interested in the games. They just kind of plodded their way through July and August like they always do, and in the end they didn't make the playoffs. What a surprise. (Wow, that was bitter.)

There was never anything interesting for anybody to get excited about. It almost got to the point where I looked forward to Tony Clark's at bats, just so I could watch him make a fool of himself. Hey, at least it was entertaining.

Whose bright idea was Tony Clark anyway? To quote columnist Bill Simmons, he was "waived by the Tigers, which should have told someone something." His batting average was 38 points lower than his weight, but Boston paid him $5 million for the season. The man had 57 hits. 57!! The Red Sox paid him almost $88,000 per hit! Are you kidding me?? Sweet Jesus! I'll go stand up there and swing if I can get $88,000 for one little dribbler through the infield. What did they think they were paying for? His whopping .291 slugging percentage? I'm getting sidetracked. Somebody make me stop.

Tony Clark is a perfect example of one of the things that went wrong this season. Too much money dumped on horrible to mediocre players. John Burkett got $5.5 million for his stellar 13-8 season. Darren Oliver got $7 million to go 4-5. Dustin Hermanson got $5.8 million for a season on the DL, and don't even get me started on Jose Offerman. The Red Sox paid over $108 million for an $85-$90 million team. But even with their ridiculous payroll, they still found room to make big time mid-season acquisitions like Cliff Floyd and Alan Embree. Again, what the hell happened?

Just like I said before, nothing happened. Even when they started the season at 40-17, there was never any moment that made you think "this team might actually have something special." Part of that was because more than half of those wins came against teams like Tampa Bay, Baltimore, Toronto, Detroit, and the like, but the other part of it was just because they really didn't have anything special.

I remember during the 1999 season (the year the Sox went to the ALCS), during one game of a midsummer series with the Yankees, the Red Sox were winning but New York was rallying. The bases were loaded for the Yanks with two out, when Bernie Williams smoked a ball between first and second. Two runs for sure. Out of nowhere, Lou Merloni dove, grabbed the ball and threw to first. Inning over. End of the threat. Not a particularly extraordinary play, but a huge moment. At that moment, when Merloni dove to stop the Yankees, you could say to yourself "Maybe this team actually has something a little different." There were no moments like that this year.

If anything, this year's players had moments that made you wonder how they were actually as good as they were. They couldn't come back when they were behind in the late innings, and had trouble holding small leads. The bullpen was shaky at best, and the middle of the lineup left something to be desired. That said, the Sox were only six wins shy of playing in October. It's hard to believe it was that close.

Maybe there's no real reason why this season went like it did. Maybe it's the Bambino roaring his ugly head again. Who knows? All anybody can do now is wait until next year, just like they've done every year for the last 84. And in the end, maybe all anyone can really say is, "What the hell happened?"