Do you have the same speculation as everyone else? Or do you maybe have a better theory as to what the problems were with Boston? I think my biggest issue right now is that the captain hasn’t said anything, but we have heard from songbird Tim Wakefield about his big record-chasing event. That’s not the reason for clubhouse issues but it does signal to me a lack of accountability and selfishness.
Some people have disagreed with me that the captain should be saying something to the fans following this 2011 collapse. I am on the complete opposite side of this opinion. Their reasoning is he ended the season banged-up and so it’s out of sight, out of mind. It’s not like he was a culprit anyway. Varitek played two weeks ago and then was shut down. That’s still a participant who went pretty far into the process. So where are his statements on what happened to his team?? That’s what I want to know. I like to hear from leadership when things don’t go well, even if it’s just to take accountability. Am I wrong?
I have a whole bench of reasonable, Freudian-speculations about this year’s team because for 1: it’s fun to theorize when you have nothing else to play with and it’s still two months before any real 2012 action starts and 2: I think looking back on the fabric of this team, they were always capable of really bad stretches of baseball. They wobbled very easily and could come off-track in hard ways.
Then they would stay off-track for longer stretches than you would hope for. It was a real topsy-turvy characteristic. Then they would right the ship and win a ton.
September wasn’t just a bad streak though. Something was already wrong in August. It just never came to the surface. The Red Sox were already wobbling well-before Francona had the big meeting following the 14-0 win over Toronto. What were the problems? Since the end of his Red Sox tenure, Francona has only said generalities like “not focusing on the right things” and “not being as supportive” as he would like to see from the team.
What does that even mean? That leaves room for some side-plot, ‘Days of Our Lives’ daytime drama. I wish Tito would have not even brought that crap up if he wasn’t going to just provide the details. Just say it ended poorly and they didn’t do what they needed to do. It’s on everyone and move on.
By now you know, when Francona did the interview the other day with WBZ’ Dan Roche he was wearing that ‘Popeye’ tshirt that said “Well Blow Me Down!” A pretty standard Popeye line except Tito crossed his arms over the word “down” so the Popeye quote read “Well Blow Me”. Coincidence? I think not.
IMO, it was not an accident and actually kind of clever because you know Rochie is so pumped about getting the exclusive with Tito that he’s not really picking up on it until much later. And like Fred Toucher said on the radio, “You think Francona just walks around wearing novelty-tees?” No way. Pretty intentional and pretty funny. Gotta love Tito.
I don’t think anyone really knows the problems except the players and the staff. but I’m interested in what people have for reasonable speculation. We hear radio callers’ wild-guesses and their whacked management theories, but most of them are just idiotic and unreasonable. Radio is for fun, but you don’t always get the best analysis. “Fire Theo?” “All the owners care about is soccer now?” “Lackey and Beckett are drunks?” “Kevin Youkilis is a problem child?” “Francona cares more about being buddies than managing?” These are all crap to me.
I’m just surprised we haven’t been fed any new or real information beyond ‘beer drinking’ and ‘bus trips’. Who was the problem child? You have to expect that the Red Sox will axe a big player soon, don’t you? Who’s going to be the guy they deal or release to send the message?
Who knows? The owners just chatted with WEEI and said a lot of interesting things but are ready to move on from 2011. I’d like to as well, but we have a long offseason and the first half of it is all retrospective.
Time for lots of guessing.
