In New England you get used to going home in the dark after work. The end of a winter’s day has a routine, and it’s cold, black and uneventful. It’s so embedded as part of the daily process from November to March, you become numb to the murk.
So when baseball season approaches, and the evening daylight grows longer, it represents a welcome transition. All of a sudden, there’s energy in the air at the end of the day. Energy that, with the help of a baseball game, can transform a random Wednesday into something memorable and exhilarating.
I bring this up because for me personally, Wednesday should not have been a good day. I had to deal with a flat tire in the morning, a busy and condensed agenda at work in the afternoon, and then I had some errands to run while trying to to get home by first pitch in the evening. I did not make it. (Thank You to the state of Connecticut for having more construction zones open on my commute than Garrett Crochet allowed hits last night. A true masterclass in efficiency!)
But all of that didn’t really matter, because at the end of the day, I had a patched tire, a productive afternoon, and most importantly, the Red Sox gave everybody another neon sign that they’re going to be pretty damn fun to watch for years to come. Life is good!
Boston Red Sox v Baltimore Orioles Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images
I left work elated and energized by the Kristian Campbell news, but also in a hurry as I wanted to get home in time to see Crochet pitch. I could feel myself getting addicted to the Sox again in a way that I haven’t been in a long, long time.
By this point, the flat tire I had to deal with earlier was the furthest thing from my mind - or at least it was until I turned on my phone to listen to the first hour of the Felger & Mazz podcast and an ad for a tire deal at Midas greeted my ears. Don’t you just love the way today’s technological wonders are being used on society?
In any case, I wanted instant, fresh reaction to when the Campbell news first broke earlier in the afternoon, and this was the quickest way to get it. Unfortunately, there was also Patriots talk about whether Bill Parcells belonged in the team Hall of Fame mixed into that first hour. But ultimately, I’m glad there was, because as those two topics sloshed back and forth, side by side, something profound struck me.
The Patriots topics of the day was about a guy who coached the team way back in the 1990s, and whether he and the owner, now both in their 80s, should make up. Meanwhile, the Red Sox topic of the day was about a rookie who just got called up and is now extended into the 2030s. Could you possibly have a more extreme juxtaposition? We’re talking about things four decades apart!
It was hard not to take that as a sign the Red Sox are very much about to become a thing again in this region, and it would not be the last one of the day.
(6/22/04 Boston, MA) Red Sox vs. Minnesota Twins at Fenway Park. Stop & Shop - The Official Supermarket of the Boston Red Sox. (HC2D0002.JPG - Staff Photo by Matthew West. Saved in Wednesday ) Photo by Matthew West/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images
I pulled into the Stop & Shop parking lot at 6:26pm, hyper focused on the items I needed to grab to complete dinner. There was no way to make it home in time for first pitch from here, but because the Sox were on the road, I still had a chance to see the beginning of Crochet’s start in the bottom of the inning if I hurried.
As it tuned out, I hit my marks and zipped out of there just quickly enough to catch the top of the first inning by radio on my drive home. But then, despite making it back in time with no help from the Red Sox offense (going down one-two-three to Zach Eflin), I then missed the bottom of the first inning anyway thanks to that hideous NESN 360 app. (I have never hated a product the way I despise this piece of trash.)
Something froze when I turned it on, so I had to log out and log back in again, and by the time I got through all the glitches, Crochet had already disposed of the Orioles in the first. Something to be happy and angry about all at once!
But from that moment onward, everything about the evening was wonderful. The events on the diamond just overwhelmed all the day’s annoyances.
Fresh off signing his new extension, Crochet looked exactly like the guy the Sox have been missing for years. Specifically, he took the ball on a four-game losing streak and shoved it up the opponent’s ass. He made a lineup that got 15 hits on Monday look silly at the plate.
Oh, and he also passed a very important test.
Do you know how you know you’ve got an ace and not just a top of the rotation pitcher? Simple: The game feels more interesting when your team is the one on defense as opposed to when they’re at the plate. It’s an inexact, stupid litmus test, but it works.
All evening, whenever I had to get up, whether it was to season the fish, pull it out of the oven, do the dishes, or go to the bathroom, I found myself intentionally aligning it so that I didn’t miss anything the filth factory was doing on the mound.
As much fun as it was watching Trevor Story go yard, Kristian Campbell knocking a pair of hits to the opposite field following his extension, and Devers getting his first two hits of the season, the most compelling part of that game was seeing Crochet completely dismantle one of the best lineups in baseball through eight shutout innings. It was glorious!
For the first time this decade, the Red Sox have an ace!
SPORTS-BBA-REDSOX-RANGERS-FT Chris Torres/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
By the end of the night, I found myself thinking about a lot of things, and they were all Red Sox related. I thought about how how big it was to have Crochet locked up long-term. I thought about how it might feel to hand him the ball in Game 1 of one of those short postseason series where it’s imperative to get off to a hot start, and I thought about how bad the Red Sox have been at developing their own pitching over the last 30 years, and how for the most part they’ve mostly only made it work when they’re willing to import it.
(Seriously, below are the top 15 Red Sox pitchers by fWAR over the last 30 years and how they were acquired. Only three were home grown. All the others had to be moved here, so Crochet fits that formula.)
But then, upon looking at all those names, I found myself thinking about how awesome that 1998 to 2011 run was for the Red Sox. During that stretch, they were box office material, and pretty much guaranteed to be around the tension point and playing meaningful baseball right to the end of almost every single year.
I want that back again, and for the first time in forever, it feels like the franchise has a shot at sustained relevance.
What a wild way to possibly come full circle. In the same city the Red Sox capped off a disastrous 7-20 finish to the 2011 season that saw the end of the Tim Wakefield, Jason Varitek, Jonathan Papelbon and Theo Epstein eras, the Red Sox are now back in Baltimore extending players and having those very guys fire off clues that they’re on the verge of opening a new window of relevancy.
After all that darkness and becoming numb to the night, something new is appearing on the eastern horizon. It’s morning again in Red Sox Nation, and boy, it sure is bright out there.
Poll
Are the Red Sox back to relevancy?
0%
Yes
(0 votes)
0%
No
(0 votes)
0 votes total Vote Now