Extra Crispy

It comes down to this. A breakfast cereal will patrol center field and the prodigal son returns. For a franchise that defines the term "Greek Opera," one would still be challenged to find another off-season like the one Red Sox fans have just endured. Mercifully, spring training begins in just a few weeks.

If we try to put the machinations and the media teeth gnashing into perspective, a few simple facts come to the surface.

The Red Sox got a lot younger, in almost every position. We'll always have a warm place in our hearts for Bill Mueller, Johnny Damon, and Kevin Millar, but nostalgia does not win championships, and in a free agent world, an unhealthy attachment to veteran players seeking long term contracts can also be a costly luxury.

The team also probably pulled off the two biggest trades of the off-season without sacrificing the young pitchers the organization coveted. Josh Beckett and Coco Crisp represent significant gambles, but both have enough upside to justify the risk. In fact, the Red Sox have had their eye on Crisp for about a year and a half (or so they say), an early indication that they had been leery about giving Damon a hefty long-term agreement long before his December departure to the Bronx.

Crisp is younger, cheaper, and heading into his prime years. Put into that context, the Damon signing simply reinforces a general consensus that the New York Yankees are still pretty good, but they are also an aging bunch, depending heavily on old workhorses, such as Randy Johnson, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and Gary Sheffield.

Free agent Alex Gonzalez could be an intriguing short-term fix at shortstop, while the Red Sox wait for twenty two year old Dustin Pedroia to join the club in a year or two. Pedroia is clearly ready to move out from under Hanley Ramirez's shadow, which may be why the Sox were less hesitant to let Ramirez go to Florida in the Beckett deal. I still wish the Sox never let Orlando Cabrera go after their World Series triumph, but like newcomers Mike Lowell, JT Snow and Mark Loretta, Gonzalez brings a strong glove.

The club now features a deeper starting rotation and bullpen, better team defense, and the best one-two punch in baseball with Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. It can be dangerous to read the tea leaves when it comes to predicting baseball outcomes, but to these amateur eyes the Red Sox seem to have gotten stronger during Theo Epstein's leave of absence, not weaker.

The Crisp saga, as well as the entire off season, offers a cautionary tale about the interlocking relationship among information starved customers (namely us poor downtrodden fans with those unrealistic expecations), an aggressive media (to say the least) and a suddenly dysfunctional organization. Truth, expert commentary, and blog fueled speculations blended to form its own reality. At times, it made for great reading, but offered little enlightenment.

The true winners are public relations professionals who specialize in crisis communications. Now they can truly spend an afternoon in the bleachers at their client's expertise and write the whole thing off as research.

Showing Some Muscle

One of my friends in high school once bought a 1970 Dodge Challenger. Most of these muscle cars contained a slant six engine capable of only 145 horsepower, but this orange monster must have packed a much larger powerplant, since I can still remember the loud rumbling noises that spilled out of its hood.

Once or twice a day, Steve would start up his Challenger in a parking lot located at the base of the hill where the high school was located. I swear that I could hear the car even if I was at the farthest end of the building. Since the vehicle only got about 8 miles to a gallon, he spent most of his time driving from gas station to gas station.

Over the last half of the 20th century, the muscle car may have been one of three most notable marketing innovations of the American automotive industry (the minivan and the sports utility vehicle would have been the other two). Whether you point its original lineage to the 1961 Chevolet Impala SS ("She's real fine....my 409," crooned Brian Wilson) or the 1964 Pontiac LeMans GTO, General Motors showed real genius in popularizing the idea of "souping up" basic sedans and making them powerful and sexy.

The teenage owners of those 60s and 70s hot rods have grown up (assuming they didn't wrap their cars around a tree), and their passion for automotive nostalgia appears to be growing. This week's North American International Auto Show in Detroit features three examples of muscle car deja vu--a Shelby Mustang, a Chevy Camaro, and an early hit, the new Dodge Challenger.

Retro cars don't automatically guarantee success (the recent 1950s inspired Thunderbird sold poorly before Ford finally pulled the plug), but in a world where US car makers lag in their ability to inspire excitement among car buyers, the "muscle car" triggers an emotional response that cannot be readily matched by Japanese competitors.

As Vance Packard might have noted, sex appeal can never be underestimated, especially when it comes to selling products. Datson B210s didn't have it, but a recent incident at the car show dramatically demonstrates that Dodge Challengers can still cause excitement. According to wire reports, someone managed to smuggle a woman into the exhibition hall early Monday morning; she was so inspired by the awesome macho design of this new automobile (or overcome by the heavy consumption of alcohol) that she flung off her clothes and posed nude for a few stunned witnesses before security broke up the impromptu exhibition.

A red-faced Chrysler PR man offered this accessment without any hint of irony. "We want people to love these cars, but not in that way."

Sweet Music

In 1970, one of my childhood friends got the coolest Christmas gift I ever saw-- a complete Bruins hockey uniform with skates, pads, stick, and best of all, Bobby Orr's number 4 jersey. My favorite player back then was Gerry Cheevers, who used to draw scars on his goalie mask to show where all those flying pucks landed over the years, but Orr was viewed as a deity in the Boston area. Automobiles used to sport bumper stickers that said "Jesus saves, but Orr scores on the rebound."

Such a gift might seem a little quaint these days, given the electronically laden wish lists I received this holiday season from my sons (in contrast, one of my nephews asked for a cactus). But I did receive a pretty cool gift myself from my wife (bless her heart)--a satellite radio.

I've had a strong interest in radio broadcasting since I secured my FCC Class III license as a teenager (an old requirement for anyone who wanted to work as a disc jockey at my college station, since you needed this license to legally sign the station logs during your shift). My eclectic musical tastes do not coincide neatly with the conservative radio programming that dominates the New York City market, so my satellite radio promises to help reduce some of the drudgery of my commute.

One of my favorite stations comes from one of the strongest and most charismatic brands of the last ten years. Starbucks has redefined drinking coffee into a specific lifestyle experience. It has altered the drinking habits of millions of people, including residents of the United Kingdom, where even tea sales are dropping in face of the chain's rapid expansion on the British Isles. Lately, Starbucks has aggressively linked music to the coffeehouse "experience," and in July of last year, it reached an agreement with XM radio to broadcast its own station, labeled after the company's musical arm, Hear Music.

Starbucks Chairman Howard Schwartz has always sought to establish Starbucks shops as the "third place" in a person's life, following work and home. Music helps establish the atmospherics that attract regular customers to visit and buy that $4 mocha soy latte with the colored sprinkles. And at a time when record sales in general have been declining, the Wall Street Journal notes that Starbucks has proven to be a robust outlet for selling music, even at full retail prices, especially for new, unknown artists:

When Starbucks carries an album, its stores often account for 20% to 30% of the record's weekly sales, and sometimes as much as 50%, Starbucks and music executives say. EMI Group's Mr. Quartararo says every time one of his company's releases has been sold at Starbucks, the coffee chain has been among the top four retailers selling it.

Every twenty years or so, something comes along to shake up the music industry and provide outlets for new artists and new trends. In the 1950s, it was Top 40 stations playing that demon rock and roll on AM. In the 1970s, it was album rock formats on FM. By the mid-1980s, MTV led the way for promoting cutting edge music, such as New Wave and eventually rap. And now, Starbucks may have brewed a winning formula with caffeine and power chords.

For someone who likes his music a little bit on the adventurous side, I can drink to that.