Idiot's Delight
Our puppy fractured her shin a few days ago, and now she drags around a yellow cast on her back leg. Titina appears unaffected by this impediment, and when we take her outside, we spend half the time trying to keep her from running all over the place.
Titina ignores her plight, and gets on with her daily routine the best she can. She provides a fitting role model for long suffering Red Sox fans everywhere.
Johnny Damon is gone. Let's move on.
The pain might be a little diminished if Damon went to Los Angeles or Baltimore or frankly anywhere but those hated Yankees, who now feature a starting lineup with players making roughly $90 million next year.
In time, he might look back wistfully at his stay in Boston, just as Bruce Hurst once did, and rue the day he chased dollars rather than bask in the glow of his adoring fans. But as Alan Embree, Kevin Millar, and Mark Bellhorn learned to their collective horror, fans can quickly turn on their heroes when their performance starts to wane.
ESPN's Colin Cowherd described Red Sox fans as the little kids who loved the cat so much that they squeezed it to death. They love to beat up on their favorite superstars, and he correctly notes that time and time again, great players, such as Pedro Martinez, Nomar Garciaparra, Mo Vaughn, Carlton Fisk, Roger Clemens, and now Damon, all seem to leave on such a sour note.
Sadly, for real diehard fans, true joy only comes when the Red Sox saga resembles a Shakespearian tragedy, so I was glad to see that ESPN's Bill Simmons has taken a calm, rational approach to the whole matter. His summation is actually quite brilliant. "If you were Johnny Damon, would you have passed up $12 million to return to a team that didn't really seem to want you back? Didn't think so," he writes. "He's not Anakin, he's not Judas, he's not the Reverse Earl Hickey. He's just another businessman who followed the money and never looked back. In other words, he's a professional athlete."
Note that a certain championship driven organization just down road from Boston has been losing star players due to injury or free agency almost every year since it began its magical run of three Super Bowl wins in four years.
Bill Belichick is not an idiot. His players are not idiots. The self-proclaimed "idiots" on the Boston Red Sox likely adopted that pose as a defensive mechanism for the idiotic passion that infects the denizens of Red Sox nation.
Titina's leg should be as good as new in a few weeks. The hearts of Red Sox fans might take a little longer to heal. But I can also bet there will not be an empty seat in Fenway Park on opening day when the Sox face Toronto on April 11, 2006. In an age of free agency, the best phrase to describe all our star athletes also fits for the newly clean-shaven Johnny Damon.
Hair today. Gone tomorrow.
Titina ignores her plight, and gets on with her daily routine the best she can. She provides a fitting role model for long suffering Red Sox fans everywhere.
Johnny Damon is gone. Let's move on.
The pain might be a little diminished if Damon went to Los Angeles or Baltimore or frankly anywhere but those hated Yankees, who now feature a starting lineup with players making roughly $90 million next year.
In time, he might look back wistfully at his stay in Boston, just as Bruce Hurst once did, and rue the day he chased dollars rather than bask in the glow of his adoring fans. But as Alan Embree, Kevin Millar, and Mark Bellhorn learned to their collective horror, fans can quickly turn on their heroes when their performance starts to wane.
ESPN's Colin Cowherd described Red Sox fans as the little kids who loved the cat so much that they squeezed it to death. They love to beat up on their favorite superstars, and he correctly notes that time and time again, great players, such as Pedro Martinez, Nomar Garciaparra, Mo Vaughn, Carlton Fisk, Roger Clemens, and now Damon, all seem to leave on such a sour note.
Sadly, for real diehard fans, true joy only comes when the Red Sox saga resembles a Shakespearian tragedy, so I was glad to see that ESPN's Bill Simmons has taken a calm, rational approach to the whole matter. His summation is actually quite brilliant. "If you were Johnny Damon, would you have passed up $12 million to return to a team that didn't really seem to want you back? Didn't think so," he writes. "He's not Anakin, he's not Judas, he's not the Reverse Earl Hickey. He's just another businessman who followed the money and never looked back. In other words, he's a professional athlete."
Note that a certain championship driven organization just down road from Boston has been losing star players due to injury or free agency almost every year since it began its magical run of three Super Bowl wins in four years.
Bill Belichick is not an idiot. His players are not idiots. The self-proclaimed "idiots" on the Boston Red Sox likely adopted that pose as a defensive mechanism for the idiotic passion that infects the denizens of Red Sox nation.
Titina's leg should be as good as new in a few weeks. The hearts of Red Sox fans might take a little longer to heal. But I can also bet there will not be an empty seat in Fenway Park on opening day when the Sox face Toronto on April 11, 2006. In an age of free agency, the best phrase to describe all our star athletes also fits for the newly clean-shaven Johnny Damon.
Hair today. Gone tomorrow.
posted by msockol at 11:46 PM
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