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    Winter

    By Barth on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 7:24pm |
    I know.  These pages are meant for the weighty issues of our time, but I have written my diary of the week about such things and now find it is time to contemplate the winter.
    It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.


    The late great Commissioner of Baseball, A Bartlett Giamatti. (He has a son who is an actor).

    They tried to tell us this all season: our eyes and our hearts deceive us. He is the same Papelbon as he always was; just tryin' out a few new things that did not work.

    Yeh, and Papi is back, even though he can't hit a lefty to save his life.

    Players get old just like the rest of us. We are grateful for what they've done and resist putting them out to pasture. And, after all, won't Damon be playing tonight? Isn't Pedro pitching tonight?

    But I do not regret losing those two guys. They no longer can contribute in the way we---the Boston Red Sox---need them to.

    I saw it in midseason and the Joy of Sox people were so upset at my saying so that they all but banished me from their knitting circle. But that could not change the facts. We were relying on ghosts: players whose past cannot make up for what they have in the present.

    Theo taught us this lesson. You can't get too attached to these guys. They serve a purpose and then they leave. Sometimes they come back finding the adulation we give them something to treasure. Dewey left; he's back. Jim Ed was angry once; now he's back. Luis went to the Yankees of all things, but he's back. But none of them still play. They all have great meaning for me and I treasure what they gave us when they could. But that was then, and this is now.

    I don't know if Daniel Bard is our closer next year. I doubt it. Paps still has a year on his contract and he will have to try very hard to redeem himself, so Bard the Closer can wait a year, I guess. 

    Ortiz is a platoon DH at best. At best. And Mike Lowell---I love the guy. His big hit in the eighth today reminded me of what a guy he is and I hope when it is all said and done, he, too, stays with us in some way. But as a player, I think we are nearing the end if not at it. Same, in every way, goes for Tek.

    It was not a great year for Theo. He made up for it by a few midseason deals. Wagner was worth getting, I guess, considering we gave up nothing for him. Vmart has value though not as much as people keep saying.

    I do not think we were ever in the running for Texeira who used us to jack up the price for NY, which is fine with me but we put too many eggs in that basket last off season.

    Jason Bay either gives us a hometown discount or can leave with my blessing. He did very well---a more than adequate replacement for That Guy on the Dodgers. But he is not worth the kings ransom people say he is worth. We can do better.

    A little more Bart before I go:

    Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

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