The Zombie Red Sox Trudge On
By Jason Gay
Updated Aug. 20, 2012 12:01 am ET
At this point, there is little use discussing the 2012 Boston Red Sox. There are better stories than an overpaid, overexposed team, spinning no place. In Washington, the Nationals are leading the NL East, close to delivering the city its first playoff baseball since FDR's debut term. The Cincinnati Reds are rolling; there's a narrow first place fight between the White Sox and Tigers; and the Baltimore Orioles—long a sad tin can, rattling around the trunk of the AL—are making noise in the wild card race. Meanwhile, there's a renovated pizza and pasta place near my apartment, and the frozen yogurt store is still bustling like a nightclub. On Saturday my wife saw a cat catch a bird. We just came into possession of some delicious organic tomatoes. My friend Holloway has a birthday on Tuesday; his wife is taking him out for Chinese food. All of these developments are more interesting than the Red Sox.
But if we are going to go there, and dive deep into another Boston season of rage, I would like to take the controls of the Spaceship of Crazy, fly it briefly down to Planet Earth and remind Red Sox fans, so furious about this sub-.500 campaign, that they still don't have a lot to complain about. Allow me to be a spokesperson for sanity. Boston's past couple of years have been frustrating ones, to be sure —2011 ended with a comical pratfall on the season's final night—but the franchise is coming off its most prosperous decade-long stretch since the 1920s. You may remember that Boston won a World Series in 2004 and 2007 (Books were written; Jimmy Fallon was in a movie.) Boston has qualified for the playoffs six out of the last nine years, a rate eclipsed by only the Yankees. If someone had offered you this deal a decade ago, you'd have taken it, instantly. That's why listening to a 21st century Red Sox fan moaning about poor performance is like hearing the Key West Chamber of Commerce whining about snow.