We didn't deserve to make it. As angry, depressed, disappointed, and bitter as I am right now (and it's toned down a lot since last night), I can see that. The Red Sox mailed it in this September, and last night's debacle was nothing more than a microcosm of the last month.
They say you don't win pennants in April. That might be true, but if nothing else, this season has taught us that you sure as hell can LOSE them in April. If we didn't get swept by Cleveland (Cleveland!) the second series of 2011, we squeak into the playoffs last night - whether we could have done a damn thing one we were in? That's another story.
However, some of the reactionary stuff I was seeing on Twitter and Facebook last night was appalling, and - in many cases - downright foolish:
Let's start off with a tweet where the poster misspelled the closer's name, exposed his own misogyny, and blamed a player with a serious injury. I'm sorry, bro, but I know you personally, and there is no goddamned way you were playing through injuries like Salty's and Youk's. Despite the fact that Lackey has thus far been a HUGE disappointment for the money, he DID manage to win 12 games, and the suggestion to sign Prince Fielder is hardly going to help out our pitching.
Let's move on:
Gold. "Sell the team." To whom, I wonder? Are you going to buy it? And it's not really like the owners can carry much of the blame here. Sure, if they had denied the money to sign a really important and obvious missing piece, but we all know that John Henry and Co. essentially have an open-wallet policy with Theo. Perhaps that's where the blame should go? But, don't forget we were all lauding Theo just eight months ago, and Sports Illustrated literally JUST ran a
story extolling the virtues of his managerial technique (you might have to subscribe to SI to see it - sorry).
So this brings me to the most popular sentiment of the night:
You have got to be joking. Luckily, there sees to be just as many people on the interwebz who are violently disagreeing, and defending Tito. I'm sure this conversation is of no surprise to Francona, after all, the double-edged sword of being a manager is that if the team wins, they were really talented, but if they lose, it's the manager's fault. Could Tito have done more to light a fire underneath his team? Maybe. We will never know what he was doing in the clubhouse. It
is worth remembering that every single Red Sox is a grown-ass man, and therefore responsible for his own performance - Tito can only enhance.
And, to wrap up the evening, here's a status update that literally made me feel sick to my stomach:
Yes, that happened on my newsfeed last night. And FIVE PEOPLE "Liked" it. Listen, I get the frustration, the thoughts that the team just doesn't work, that maybe starting over would be better - that it couldn't be worse. But these men are people. Just like you and me. They have families and lives outside of baseball. I don't care how much of a superfan you are, wishing for a plane crash just makes you a spectacularly shitty human being.
If anything, I hope this ending, this season, leaves us wiser as fans. You don't win seasons in the offseason. The playoffs are a special event, not a perennial birthright. Sometimes you're on the losing end of epic chokefests. All of these things kind of suck, and for fans like me, who didn't live through much of the storied franchise heartache (1999 and 2003, but before that was before my time), this is a stark reminder that we as Red Sox fans have lived a charmed existence.
But for me, it's worth it. I have seen two World Series Championships come to my team in my lifetime, and I believe I'll live to see many more. Last night was crushing, painful, tear-inducing, because baseball and the Red Sox are my life. But the feeling I got when I saw them win it in Colorado in 2007 and St. Louis in 2004 outweighs that heartache by an indescribable amount. Being a dedicated (some might say obsessive) fan can fucking HURT sometimes - but when it feels good, it feels
SO GOOD, SO GOOD, SO GOOD!
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