Originally published June 24, 1983 by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe
Somehow, this is the saddest of all baseball seasons. It is a lost and joyless summer, a few months cut out of a year when the Olde Town Team seems intent on filling us with all the anticipation of a root canal.
Very little of the ill feeling has to do with the won and lost columns. It doesn’t stem from the fact that the pitching staff is so thin it could be called baseball’s answer to anorexia.
Forget even that opposing pitchers can go through the bottom half of the Red Sox batting order faster and more easily than you can go through the tunnel to East Boston at dawn on a Sunday morning. Ignore the fact that this is a club without one pure star a guaranteed attraction an athlete who puts people in the seats and excitement in the park.
Part of this year’s regret was born on the afternoon when Buddy LeRoux looked at Jean Yawkey and Haywood Sullivan the way Nicaragua looks at Honduras. But that’s just a small slice of the problem.
The big enchilada, as they say, the thing you cannot escape, the one element that hangs over Fenway Park the way smog hangs over Santa Monica is this: We have a bunch of losers on our hands.
Not losers in the sense that they won’t be there in October, although you can bet the farm that they most certainly will not be anywhere near first place come fall.
Losers in the larger sense: Three or four guaranteed big leaguers surrounded by fringe players who are up in the bigs only because they fit the budget, not the batting order.
This is a club that will prosper. This a club that will survive. And this is a club that will never make a run for the roses.
Let’s look at what we have and what we see. Forget frontoffice propaganda about farm systems and going with the kids. Ignore sports page patter about character and a bunch of nice guys. Baseball in Boston has never been an awards ceremony for the nine best smiles.
We need a first baseman at Fenway Park. We do not have one today. Yaz is too old. Dave Stapleton has no range. We need a first baseman.
We’re OK at second for a while. But Jerry Remy will not last forever and there is no one in back of him other than Dwight Evans.
Shortstop: the slide of this organization can be traced to the day they let The Rooster go rather than pay him what he was worth. Glenn Hoffman can play adequately well but he has less range than Margaret Thatcher.
At third base, you have Wade Boggs. The kid can hit the threads off a baseball but has a bit of a problem picking one up from the ground.
As outfielders go, the Red Sox are doing well. They have three major leaguers on a regular basis. But if one of them were ever out injured for any length of time, the club would go down faster than the Hindenburg.
There is no catching. There is very little consistent pitching.
You see, my friends, consistent pitching does not mean three well thrown games in April and May. Consistent pitching means a team has at least one man with one arm that can and will stop any club on any given day. It means you have at least one guy who can take the ball and you don’t have to rush to the Mission Church to pray for six decent innings.
The Olde Town Team does boast an extraordinary reliever in Bob Stanley. And if Ralph Houk continues to use Stanley as much as he is forced to use him, Boston will be the only team in history with a relief hurler who resembles Mahatma Gandhi.
Behind Stanley, there is the Mass. Pike Extension. That is it.
Of course, there is always Dennis Eckersley. And if he could ever throw the way he talks, he might win 10 games some year. Eckersley could not stop a toilet with a hamper full of towels.
Unfortunately, this is a team put together on a Mastercharge. There is a salary limit, and not one dime more than necessary will be spent on tomorrow until they figure out how to pay for today.
Here in New England we have a group of limited partners presiding over a collection of limited talent. We have corporate writeoff baseball and an infield that looks better as a tax break than it does as a doubleplay combination.
There can be no trades. No free agents. Nothing that might break the bank. Play a game in 1983 by rules that went out the window in 1973. Nothing matters other than the click of the turnstile and the constant cash from big TV contracts.
Pay off the debt. The pennant might come later. Look around. Look at what’s happened to baseball and Boston and the Olde Town Team. Someone has stolen our summer.
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