Whenever anything goes wrong in my life, I tend to deflect blame onto something else, preferably an intangible or helpless entity. Step in a puddle? Bad karma. Fail a test? Teacher's fault; too hard. Mother gets mad at me for not flushing the toilet? Blame the dog.
This mentality is at once irrational and an accurate explanation for the Terry Francona situation and, for that matter, every reactionary coaching decision in history.
The notion of a scapegoat extends back to the Old Testament and Leviticus. In chapter 16, Aaron lays his hands on a live goat, confessing the Israelites' iniquities and their sins before sending the goat away into the wilderness. The goat, it is written, will carry the Israelites' burden past the city limits and into the wild.
The eerie parallels between the way we treat sports and the way the Israelites, well … built a nation, was initially brought up by Ohio minister Kathleen Rolenz in the ESPN documentary "Catching Hell" (2011), the story of exiled Chicago sports fan Steve Bartman. Bartman was the ultimate scapegoat, the film argues, a peaceful man forced to unfairly bear the weight of a suffering sports town, a man who's never returned after being forced out the door.
Within this knee−jerk sports world in which we dwell, Francona's departure makes sense. The Red Sox went 7−20 in September and blew a 9.5−game Wild Card lead to the Tampa Bay Rays and missed the postseason despite a gaudy payroll and an All−Star lineup that got preseason touts as the greatest in Boston history.
This is textbook. Players underperform late in the season. Fan morale tanks. The media descends. Insane notions of curses resurface. And the spotlight falls on the expendable one, the non−investment, the scapegoat. It's unavoidable; that much is certain.
But why?
We've traced the scapegoat's origins as a method of expelling sin and immaterial notions of wrongdoing. At its core, having a scapegoat makes us feel better. It deflects blame from ourselves and shoulders the burden onto an object that cannot fight back.
And somewhere along the line, it superseded a religious purpose and entered the everyday sports lexicon. Scapegoating is no longer about righting our wrongs; it's about righting the wrongs of those whom we feel have wronged us.
The assumption is that the blame falls on a manager. When Terry Francona tells the media about "my team's" failures, he's using the first−person possessive for a reason. He shoulders the burden because he must — because when ink touched the dotted line eight seasons ago, the implications were as meaningful as the money.
You win, you're a hero. You lose, you're a goat. Players will get blamed on a micro level, on a game−to−game basis. An error here, a blown save there, you get the idea. It'll get written up in the newspapers and on the blogs, only to disappear within days. That's inherent with a 162−game season.
But tank September, string together errors and blown leads on a daily basis, and somewhere along the line the blame shifts from the soldiers to the general.
Phrased like that, it only seems natural that Francona would exit unceremoniously, leaving behind him a decade of glory and two World Series. Francona is the rule, not the exception.
Granted, some Red Sox will be scapegoated too. John Lackey has attained pariah status and Carl Crawford will be highly scrutinized for his gaudy contract that hardly matches up with an inability to catch Texas Leaguers.
Francona has exiled himself past Boston's city limits and there are surely greener pastures ahead. The gates of Chicago have opened, but the unmistakable stench of Beantown's frustration, etched into the scapegoat's hide, will forever linger.
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Alex Prewitt is a senior majoring in English and religion. He can be reached on his blog at http://livefrommudville.blogspot.com or followed on Twitter at @Alex_Prewitt.
