There's a guy at my office I've taken to calling the Red Sox Oracle. Maybe he's got a connection somewhere; maybe he's just a lucky guesser. But at random times throughout my time working there, he's come up to me and made a simple prediction statement concerning the Red Sox. No more than a week after he does this, sometimes sooner, the prediction from this guy is proven true.
I didn't believe him when he told me about Theo.
"Theo's not coming back," is what he said, not "hello" or "how are you" or anything. Just stirring his coffee in the kitchen at the office one morning, as I came up next to him, he says this to me without even looking. I tried to argue, but he would hear none of it.
"Nope. Gone," he said, walking away.
He's not unfriendly--he and I have had other conversations on occasion, including more normal ones about the Red Sox. It's just that every so often, particularly in this off-season, he's just come up to me, made these announcements and then walked off with hardly another word except to restate what he's already said.
"Damon's gone," he told me another day.
"Sure," I said back. "Everybody's saying that."
"Yep," he answered. "Yankees got him."
"You really think so?" I said incredulously. "I don't know if they--"
"Yep. Yankees got him." He said, and again, he left.
Today on his way out the door he walked past my desk. "Manny Ramirez is in a Red Sox uniform this year."
This time, I just nodded.
This time my boss overheard him.
"What did he say?" she asked after he was gone. She's the one who dubbed him the "Red Sox Oracle" after I explained the situation to her.
And now here it is, your Moment of Zen.
P.S. I had great fun translating the ESPN Deportes version (they were the ones to break the story) but figured I'd just link to the English version after finally, I don't know, Googling to see if there was one.
P.P.S. Brian at Wallball Single had this incredibly interesting observation the other day:
What I really want to do, though, is to confess to one nagging worry. Both of the trades the Sox pulled off were accomplished when Bill Lajoie was heading the Group of Four. And as soon as he pulled back for health reasons, the drift began. Now, that could just be a coincidence. Maybe the deals were there then, and nothing has been available since. But one place where inexperience could show up would be in an inability to "close the deal" with other teams on trades. It's possible–not saying it's true–that the Sox are at a disadvantage now without an experienced hand at the helm, that they have a diminished ability to go that final step with teams and hammer out deals that benefit the Sox. It's one thing to see the path you need to take, it's another to have the ability to navigate that path.
I am very glad Brian did not quit blogging.
Huh. I sat down on the bus today and had a guy two seats away, who I had never seen before, turn to me, nod firmly and say, "We're gettin' Clemens."
Which would seem like an awfully weird thing to turn and say to someone you've never seen before, but I was wearing my Red Sox hat and Red Sox jacket at the time, so it's not like I'm exactly subtle.
Oracular? Hmm.
Posted by: Boston Fan in Michigan | January 05, 2006 at 22:19