DHL Dan CCXXVIII - Spooky Thoughts

Speaking of mailing it in, I skipped three of Shank's columns from ealier in the week, so we can get right to a sequel to Shank's infamous book, The Curse of The Bambino:

These Mookie Betts/Babe Ruth parallels with the Red Sox are getting spooky, and other thoughts

NEW YORK — Picked-up pieces while concluding that the Mets, Phillies, and Padres also would have beaten the Yankees . . .

▪ The Dodgers won the World Series Wednesday, and it was Mookie Betts driving in the winning run. Mookie has won two World Series since the Red Sox dealt him for Jeter Downs (released after 14 games), Connor Wong, and Alex Verdugo (traded to the Yankees).

This really is starting to feel like Babe Ruth Redux. Exactly 100 years later.

The Babe came to the Red Sox in 1914, Mookie in 2014.

The Babe won a World Series with the Sox in 1918, Mookie in 2018.

The Babe was sold to the Yankees after the 1919 season because Red Sox ownership needed cash. Mookie was traded to the Dodgers after the 2019 season because the Red Sox wouldn’t pay what the Dodgers were willing to pay him.

DHL Dan CLXXX - Big Returns

With Mookie Betts having returned to Boston this weekend, Shank looks back at other former Boston athletes who've come back to Boston on another team:

Recalling some memorable Boston ‘comebacks,’ and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while trying to navigate Apple TV+ …

▪ With Mookie Betts in town for the weekend, it’s fun to look back at other celebrated returns to Boston.

The legendary Babe Ruth, who was sold to the Yankees 100 years before Betts was salary-dumped to the Dodgers, launched the greatest dynasty in the history of American sports for New York City … but he didn’t hurt the Red Sox when he first returned to Fenway. Playing center field and batting cleanup in April of 1920, the Bambino went a tepid 3 for 12 with two singles and a double in three losses at Fenway.

Unlike Ruth, Tom Brady, Roger Clemens, and Carlton Fisk got revenge in their first trips home.

In October of 2021, the much-decorated Brady — who was allowed to walk by Bob Kraft and Bill Belichick — triumphantly returned to Foxborough as Super Bowl champion quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Brady was cheered with gusto when he ran the length of the Gillette Stadium field (his signature entrance in the glory days here) before the start of the game.

The Mookie Betts Columns

Shank's here to painfully remind you about the trade that sent Mookie to the Dodgers and, of course, the state of both teams:

This Mookie Betts appearance is a painful reminder of the contrasting fortunes of the Dodgers and Red Sox

Mookie Betts will be at Fenway Park Friday for the first time since he was dealt from Boston in 2020. His mere presence reminds us of an epic Red Sox blunder. It’s a little bit like Babe Ruth returning to Fenway for the first time after Sox owner Harry Frazee sold him to the Yankees in the winter of 1919-20.

On Jan. 10, 2020, less than a month before Betts was dealt, Red Sox owner John Henry, overseeing the top payroll in baseball, returned an email from yours truly and stated, “We are focused on competitiveness over the next 5 years.”

Looks like someone lost some focus!

He then asks Sam Kennedy (Red Sox CEO) about the Red Sox AppleTV + games on this and other nights:

Loyal NESN subscribers who follow the Red Sox all year may be in for a surprise when they attempt to watch the Sox at Fenway Friday night in Mookie Betts’s first Boston appearance since the Sox dealt him to the Dodgers in 2020. The game will not be on NESN. It will be broadcast on Apple TV+.

MLB is in its second year of a seven-year, $85 million-per-year deal to stream Friday night games on Apple TV+.

“We always like to have our games on NESN,” said Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy. “But we also recognize that we are part of a broader ecosystem, so having our games shown outside of the territory is good for baseball and for the Red Sox.

I'm not going to lose sleep over a missed Red Sox game here and there.

Connection Made

Or - A Tale of Two Grand Slams:

A tale of two grand slams: Mookie Betts, Pablo Reyes, and the direction of Chaim Bloom’s Red Sox

Mookie Betts and Pablo Reyes both hit grand slams Monday.

Betts’s blast powered the first-place Dodgers (65-46) to a 13-7 win over the Padres. Reyes’s walkoff granny gave the Red Sox a 6-2 win over the moribund Royals (36-78), vaulting your Towne Team out of last place for a few hours.

How are these things connected?

Chaim Bloom, that’s how.

Bloom’s first big moment as Boston’s baseball boss came in February of 2020 when he traded the face of the franchise and likely Hall of Famer Betts to the Dodgers for Alex Verdugo, Connor Wong, and Jeter Downs.

The Dodgers are going to be at Fenway two weeks from Friday, and it’ll be Mookie’s first appearance since that awful deal. And it got me wondering whether poor Chaim will still be on the job when Betts comes to town.

Wondering? I bet Shank's rooting for it.

Shank Pretends To Hate The Mookie Betts Trade

Shank's starting out the 2020 Boston Red Sox season in fine form:

What a week.

What a winter.

What a team.

Desperate for relevance, backpedaling after a wildly unpopular deal that angered the fan base like nothing since Grady Little didn’t lift Pedro Martinez (or perhaps when Haywood Sullivan forgot to mail Carlton Fisk’s contract), the Red Sox officially begin spring training Wednesday at JetBlue Park in Fort Myers, Fla.

Almost a full week after initially agreeing to trade Mookie Betts and David Price to the Dodgers, Chaim Bloom finally met with the media at JetBlue Monday and essentially made the same request that ownership did when it was learned that the commissioner’s office was investigating the Red Sox for allegations of cheating in the 2018 season:

Familiar With The Premise

If there's one sports columnist that can write about it with authority, it's Shank:

Face it, Red Sox fans, you are overrating Mookie Betts a bit

All Red Sox fans love Mookie Betts. And what is not to love? He was MVP in 2018, hitting .346 with 32 homers. He has led the American League in runs each of the last two seasons. He is a Gold Glove right fielder, playing half his games in the toughest right field in baseball. He is an electric player and has never done anything to tarnish himself or the uniform.

But he is also a free agent at the end of next season, shows no signs of re-upping with the Red Sox, and, quite frankly, is a tad overrated around here.

Look in the mirror, big guy...

If You Dig Deep Enough You'll Hit Some Rocks

He really is a relentlessly negative asshole, isn't he?

FORT MYERS, Fla. — So there. It’s all true. We weren’t making it up last summer/fall when we told you that the first-place 2017 Red Sox were sour, unhappy, dysfunctional, and headed for a fall. A couple of Sox everyday stalwarts gave voice to it Thursday morning at JetBlue Park before the second official workout for pitchers and catchers.

“We had a lot of stuff going on last year,’’ acknowledged Xander Bogaerts, a veteran of the 2013 world champion Red Sox.

Could he be a little more specific?

“I mean, we all know,’’ Bogaerts said. “We all know what was going on. I don’t think I want to get into details, but that’s what I said.

“The quicker we move on, the better for all of us. We should look forward to this year. It’s a new year. We should try to reach the playoffs again and get over that first round.’’

The problem right now is that Shank will not move on, until John Henry calls Shank into his office and tells him to knock this shit off.

With The CHB, All Betts are Off

One of the hallmarks of a Shaughnessy column is his tendency to build one person up by trashing another. To that end, today's piece, on Mookie Betts, does not disappoint.

In promoting Betts, The CHB trashes Adrian Gonzalez, just one day after trashing the GM who was "irrationally protective of the trove of draft picks" and traded future All-Star 1B Anthony Rizzo for AGone. Which do you want: develop great players in-house, or sign/trade for them? Because no franchise does both consistently well.

He takes a further dig at team analyst Bill James, whose work, of course, led to the Red Sox signing players like Mookie Betts.

And he gets a basic fact about Betts wrong, writing his "career path has been seamless," ignoring that Betts was slow to hit when he first arrived in the bigs and was sent down to AAA.

On a side note, it's impossible to know what counts with The CHB, since he whines about "results" when the process doesn't work out and whines about lack of "character" when it does (2004, 2007, 2013). In today's column he claims Dave Dombrowksi is the most "accountable" Red Sox GM since the late Lou Gorman, and yet it was Gorman who traded future MVP (and Hall of Famer) Jeff Bagwell (and World Series MVP Curt Schilling) and yet never acknowledged they were stupid trades. The Red Sox are supposed to compete every year, The CHB always asserts. But remember what happened on Dombrowksi's watch the year after his Marlins won the 1997 World Series? They lost twice as many games as they won.

At the end of the day, the proof that Red Sox owner John Henry doesn't interfere in the work of his employees even when he has to suffer complete foolishness from them is this: He also owns the Globe, and The CHB still has a job.

Shank's Next Column?

Safe to say Mookie Betts won't be in the Daytona 500 next week with driving skills like this.

To the Victorino Goes the Spoiler

In every big transaction, there is a magic moment during which a man has surrendered a treasure, and during which the man who is due to receive it has not yet done so. An alert lawyer will make that moment his own, possessing the treasure for a magic microsecond, taking a little of it, passing it on. If the man who is to receive the treasure is unused to wealth, has an inferiority complex and shapeless feelings of guilt, as most people do, the lawyer can often take as much as half the bundle, and still receive the recipient’s blubbering thanks. 

So says Leech, the professor who schools the scheming family trust lawyer Norman Mushari in Kurt Vonnegut's novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

Similarly, our boy Dan knows that in every big (or little) conversation, there is a magic moment during which a man a surrendered a thought, and during which the sportswriter can make that moment his own, possessing the thought long enough to make a controversy out of it, and eventually, a paycheck.

And that's what The CHB does today, highlighting -- though not offering any wisdom, insight, or funny jokes -- the imagined dispute between Red Sox outfielders Shane Victorino and Mookie Betts, and the real (and senseless) opportunism by his radio facsimilies Michael Felger and Tony Massarotti, who are trying to make something out of nothing.

And why would a guy with nothing to add to the situation even bother reporting on it? A spring training where the focus is on baseball simply isn't good enough for Shank the Spoiler.

Mookie Betts

Shank writes about the latest Red Sox call-up from Pawtucket and can barely contain his optimism:

NEW YORK — Let’s just go ahead and call this what it is:

The free-falling Red Sox are in full-blown panic mode. After Friday night’s Rollover Beethoven, three-hit shutout loss to the immortal Vidal Nuno, Sox general manager Ben Cherington and manager John Farrell got together and decided to call up Markus Lynn “Mookie” Betts.

This is what the fans want. This is what the fans need. (no sarcasm there! - ed.) And so the Sox summoned a 5-foot-9-inch, 156-pound, 21-year-old kid who has played exactly 77 games above Single A ball. They called up a kid who was not invited to the big league clubhouse in spring training. They called up the next Sox phenom, an innocent successor in the Sox’ conga line of mega-hyped prospects named Juan Bustabad, Chico Walker, Brady Anderson, Frankie Rodriguez, Lars Anderson, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Xander Bogaerts. Some of them worked out. Some didn’t. Now it’s Mookie’s turn.

Juust a bit over the top!