Another bright spot in Wednesday's otherwise miserable game was the debut of Pawtucket star Will Middlebrooks, who filled in for an ailing Kevin Youkilis at third base. The kid was greeted warmly at Fenway, and returned the compliment by batting 1.000 (well, for a time, anyway) and stealing a base.
Mouseover to see captions.
My first live game of the season Wednesday night basically amounted to three-plus hours of shivering and ill-timed Red Sox strikeouts, as the hometown team faltered through nine futile innings against the Oakland A's.
But there were some delightful aspects of this game, too, like the fact that every player on the field and in the dugout was decked out in stripey high socks as part of 1936 throwback uniforms, worn in honor of Jimmie Foxx's first season in the majors.
It was a second and 10, Chicago Bears from their own 25 on the chilly ground at Gillette Stadium, well into the second quarter of their game against the New England Patriots on November 26, 2006. Runningback Cedric Benson was handed the ball and headed for a gap in the line over right tackle.
Patriots linebacker Junior Seau had other ideas.
He lunged after Benson from behind, fell into the runningback's legs, and his reward for the single tackle he would record that night was a snapped forearm, which hung at a gruesome angle in slow-motion replays on the Jumbo-Tron. Junior, on his knees, doubled over it in agony, so far that the top of his helmet touched the turf.
Fellow linebacker Tedy Bruschi approached as the trainers did, took one look at his brother in the 'backerhood and patted him on the shoulder in condolence for what was to be a season-ending injury.
Seau finally got up, cradling the mangled limb in front of him, and walked off the field. As he left, he saluted the fans who were giving him a rousing sendoff.
I was one of them; I was on the third deck gasping at the ghastly replay with everyone else. And the memory is still so clear, I find it hard to believe right now that i didn't really write about it at the time.
It was the first thing I thought of when I heard about his apparent suicide yesterday, news which took my breath away. How willing this man was to sacrifice his body on the field. How stoically he had handled physical pain, with the presence of mind to give that little wave as he left the field that night.
And how mental pain is a different ball game, as more and more retired NFL players seem to be finding out once they leave the field.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
More is being discovered every day about the effects of chronic head injury, or chronic traumatic encephelopathy (CTE), among them debilitating depression, that are wreaking havoc on the lives of ex-NFL players. News of an ex-player's suicide is sadly all too common, even though this is the first one that's hit so close to home for me.
I'm not here to debate whether football is fundamentally harmful to one's health; I think these men who play the sport professionally do so from the heart and do so with knowledge of the risks. What saddens me about the fact that so many of them wind up dying is the fact that -- league responsibility and helmet design and children's experiences in football all set aside for the moment -- depression is an illness as biological and concrete as that broken arm Seau walked off the field with, and just as treatable,
But we also still live in a society where people, especially men, especially big, tough, athletic men who've spent their lives being pillars of physical strength, learn instead that it's a character flaw, and where they die before seeking help. Today, I remember Junior, and I dearly wish that it was otherwise.
If there's any lesson to be taken from his tragic passing, I wish it would be not a moratorium on the game he loved, but that depression can strike the strongest among us; that it can be described as many things, but "weakness" is one thing that shouldn't be on the list.
If you or someone you love suffers from depression, help is abundantly available. There are organizations like NAMI and DBSA in the community that are absolutely free and open to all. There are hotlines, including 1-800-273-TALK.
The good news is that we also live in a world where the resources to deal with this illness are growing ever more plentiful, where understanding and awareness are slowly beginning to bloom.
There's hope. There's help. It doesn't have to be this way.
Rest in peace, Junior.
My favorite moments personally experienced at Fenway Park:
It was strange to see Jason Varitek get emotional at yesterday's press conference. Not that I think the man is an android, but...okay, well, at times you may have been able to fool me. He has always seemed so impenetrable, so macho, that seeing his eyes welling up with tears and watching him struggle to compose himself had a Twilight Zone feeling about it.
I already posted when news broke a couple days ago that he was going to retire, but it seems wrong not to mark the Captain's official goodbye with a post, so below, a look back through photos and blog snippets dedicated to Tek.
Wake and now Tek gone in just a matter of weeks. You knew it had to happen, but, ouch.
Below is re-post (with a bit of clean-up) of something I wrote after Daisuke Matsuzaka threw a near-no-hitter with Varitek behind the plate in May 2010. It pretty much sums up how I felt and still feel about Jason Varitek.
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A love letter to Jason Varitek
Daisuke’s still the one who, with apologies to the Commander, executed the pitches. This isn’t meant to take away from his performance or suggest that Varitek was the sole reason for his dominance tonight. But the correlation between our pitching staff’s best work this season and Varitek’s appearances behind the plate is strong.
Jason Varitek is a striking ballplayer -- physically, visually, he is everything gritty and noble and timeless about the game of baseball, embodied. The way he holds that steady gaze, the kind that would break yours easily if you ever encountered it in person. That stern expression, always determined, always professional and dignified. One of the best shots NESN ever included in one of their lead-in montages was of Varitek’s eyes gazing brightly out from behind his mask in the blazing sun of a scorching midsummer’s afternoon, a single bead of sweat cutting a path down one muddy, dusty, stubbly cheek.
Or maybe that’s just a projection, and maybe the way Varitek looks to a fan is a product of the way he carries himself. Above all, Varitek is that grim, steady figure, silent most of the time, particularly on the subject of his own accomplishments. But in his newly spotty role this season, the days he does catch have made his value as a pitching coach on the field crystal clear.
Thinking of Varitek in this context is bittersweet. Like Tim Wakefield, it feels now like there has never been a Red Sox without him. I’m sure there have been players that felt like that before, and of course their time to go never failed to arrive.
Varitek has seen something of a recovery in his offensive production this season, but it could be his lightened playing schedule that’s accountable for his resurgence. And whatever happens this year, the fact is that Tek is not getting any younger. His starts will only grow fewer and further between.
Every play of every baseball game begins with a thought – in the mind of a man hunched down at home, before he puts down a signal to the pitcher 60 feet away, a thought distilled from a vast array of subtle situational factors, which include the temperament of the person on the other end of the battery that powers the entire engine of the game.
It’s easy to scoff at the idea of intangibles, but how do you analyze, quantify, or develop in future prospects the ability to know the mind of the man he’s assigned to work with, regardless of individual personality, to anticipate his thoughts, to sense his vulnerabilities, and then make judgments -- in the midst of a hundred other calculations -- accordingly? Is that a teachable skill? Or does it say something about the heart of the person in whom it seems a preternatural gift?
Which is why this isn't about disparaging V-Mart, either, or suggesting that his role should -- or even could -- be reduced. It may just be that with Varitek, we've grown accustomed to a level of brilliance that won’t soon pass this way again.
For a lot of reasons, most of which I'll probably never get into here in great detail, I haven't had the time others have had to "process" the 2011 collapse. I haven't dug into all the nuances of beer and chicken, haven't debated at length about pitching stats and hurt ankles and weight gain.
I was watching in September, even if I wasn't writing, and the Red Sox collapse will forever be entwined with some of the worst moments of my life. In fact, it seemed at that time like the team fell apart in unison with everything else around me. So it's difficult for me, still, to take a step back and take an objective look at what happened.
That said, after reading and re-reading the raw transcripts of what was said by Josh Beckett and Jon Lester today in reference to the 2011 season; watching the videos of the interviews; following a thread on SoSH; and even reading a Dan Shaughnessy column, I realized that difficult though it may be, I need to take that step back, and separate my emotions about unrelated things from the memories of baseball in September if I want to write about this. Hell, if I want to continue to follow the sport at all.
When I do take that step back, I can see that first of all, this is as close to a dramatic mea culpa as we're going to get from the likes of Josh Beckett. Would it have been more satisfying if he had actually said the words, "I'm sorry," in just about any context? Absolutely. Will that ever happen in a million billion years? Probably not.
When I take that step back, I can admit that at first, it seemed from the transcripts that Jon Lester had much more of a gentlemanly presence about him than did Beckett, whose responses on the page are terse, at times monosyllabic. It's easy, knowing what we know about Beckett, to imagine it all coming out in a surly snarl or an eye-rolling deadpan. It's easy to read them in a defensive tone.
But if you watch the videos of both of them speaking (and there is more video "evidence" from Beckett's interview posted, for some reason, than Lester's), it's actually Beckett who comes off as the level-headed one, his tone even, unruffled -- not sullen, but matter-of-factly calm.
Meanwhile, there's a moment in Lester's interview where the lefty seems to bridle when he's asked a followup question about what it means to be a leader in the clubhouse, tugging at his shirt and tightening his jaw as he answers, "Just not doing it." ("It" meaning the 'beer and chicken' behavior.)
I'm not saying that to attack Lester, but to demonstrate that either pitcher's performance in front of the mics and tape recorders and cameras today could have been characterized as surly, depending on whether you went on tone or on word count. Or, both of them could be characterized as the best we're going to get, considering these are athletes and not politicians (in other words, Hunter, you're right).
When I take that step back, in other words, I realize it's all a tempest in a teapot. Or, to put it another way, February in Boston, where the baseball headlines, as yet, are few, and there's room for episodes like this to be picked apart and chewed on ad nauseam.
Here's hoping that by this time next month, both today's press conferences and the pain of last autumn will be just distant objects in the rear-view mirror.
The first memory that springs to mind when I think of Tim Wakefield is of him weeping in the Yankee Stadium clubhouse late in the night of October 16, 2003. I remember how Trot Nixon stood over him, trying to comfort him, but he was inconsolable.
It may seem inappropriate to think first of such a sad moment, but it sums up who Tim Wakefield is, and is to us. Wake wept because he was afraid he'd take a place in Red Sox history alongside Bill Buckner -- not responsible for the team's loss, but the last face associated with it, as Aaron Boone's homer sailed off into the night.
Whether it was that sense of history, or that sensitivity to the feelings of fans, Tim Wakefield has been such a rarity in the modern world of sports as to be unheard of. The phrase "coach on the field" is often used to describe athletes with an uncanny knowledge and instinct for their game; Wakefield has been, instead, a kind of fan on the field. He has stepped up to carry the mantle of his connection to our collective history, even when, as on that night nearly ten years ago, it was unbearably heavy.
The next thing I think of when I think of Tim Wakefield is this:
As Mike Timlin pointed out, for Wakefield to take himself out of the picture at a moment of glory -- to sacrifice himself for the team, as he always seemed to do -- is a tremendous act of unselfishness. Rare indeed is the modern athlete who contributes to his team's victory by graciously stepping aside.
There's so much history that goes with Wakefield that I know I'm glossing over some major moments just by narrowing things down to a top 3, but I have to go with my gut, and my gut fast-forwards, at this point, to a memory and a night I witnessed in person, rather than through the TV: Wake's 200th win.
Seven times before, he'd tried and failed to earn the milestone W. Time and time again, he'd been let down by the bats or a member of the bullpen, but this time, the bats exploded, plating 18 runs to put an emphatic stamp on his ultimate win.
Fenway Park was pandemonium as we all waited for Wake to emerge to take his curtain call. When he did come into view, he made sure to salute every part of the ballpark. When he made his remarks, he made sure to mention how happy he was to have earned this milestone win at home, in front of the Fenway fans.
Rare is the pitcher who earns 200 wins; so rare among Red Sox pitchers that it puts Wake third on the all-time list, behind two guys you may have heard of named Cy Young and Roger Clemens. But even among such rarified company, Wake is his own exotic species -- no commanding fireballer he, but a yeoman worker, his accomplishment that much richer and sweeter for all its struggles.
"Rare." That word keeps coming back.
To be an athlete who spends 17 seasons with one team, and then retires as a member of that team, is a rarity today. To be a knuckleballer is and always has been a rarity. To be all of these things and an amazing person besides? Rarity upon rarity. Even while he's been playing, these last few years, we've known: we shall not see his like again.
Thank you, Tim Wakefield, for what you have meant to Red Sox fans. Thank you for your heart, your skill, your dedication and devotion, for all these years. It won't be the same team without you.
All the Red Sox needed to do this past weekend was win one game.
A frustrating inability to capitalize on Yankees losses while they played in Toronto was in the past. For the time being, injuries to the starting rotation seemed surmountable, at least for one game.
One game, and they'd at least tread water in the division as well as in the Wild Card standings. One game, one win -- which would have been just their third in the month of September -- and the complexion of things would remain overcast, but steer clear of dour.
They couldn't do it.
Of the three games the Red Sox to the Rays this past weekend, the most surprising was the 9-1 rout behind Jon Lester. But the most frustrating, by far, was the walkoff win for Tampa Bay late on Saturday night.
Nobody was expecting much from Kyle Weiland, and he delivered a lukewarm four-inning, three-run start before being yanked in favor of Alfredo Aceves.
The Red Sox, meanwhile, had squeezed a run across in the top of the second on a fielder's choice groundout courtesy of Jed Lowrie, and in the top of the fifth, Adrian Gonzalez hit a resounding two-run homer to tie up the score at three all. Gonzalez hollered as he high-fived his teammates in the dugout -- some fire, some spark, at least, seemed to be returning to the team with that hit.
And that's when Aceves gave up two more runs, only the fourth time in 42 relief appearances this season that he's given up more than one.
But the Sox weren't done raising our hopes -- in the top of the ninth, with one out, Jarrod Saltalamacchia hit a solo home run that just barely cleared the wall. Jacoby Ellsbury's homer, which followed, was much more decisive, a towering blast to center at 413 feet. Tie game, for the second time.
Then--worse--the Red Sox had a chance to put things away right there and then, when a slumping Dustin Pedroia doubled, and Gonzalez walked. There was still just one out when David Ortiz came to the plate -- and grounded into a double play.
From there, the game would continue for another two innings. Jonathan Papelbon did his part, pitching two perfect innings, but so did Tampa Bay's Cesar Ramos and Brandon Gomes. With each passing out, the win that had seemed imminent in the top of the ninth slipped further from Boston's grasp.
Suddenly, in fact, it seems we're witnessing the return of the team that went 0-6 and 2-10, the team that now seems like the evil alter ego of the 2011 Red Sox we've been able to enjoy most of the summer.
The worrisome return of the Slumping Sox just in time for the stretch run was embodied on Saturday by Daniel Bard. On Opening Day, he kicked off the bullpen malaise that marked the early season with a career-bad appearance, in which he surrendered four runs and allowed the Texas Rangers (another September nemesis) to blow open the game.
Now, in September, Bard has been at the helm of two walkoff wins for Boston's opponents, first, for the Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre last Wednesday night -- and again on Saturday, when he surrendered an RBI single in the bottom of the 11th to Evan Longoria.
Of course, it's not all on Bard, or even the bullpen. The injury bug has also begun a slithering return, claiming our best pitcher with an ankle injury to Josh Beckett and one of the staples of the Sox lineup with bursitis and a hernia suffered by Kevin Youkilis. Had the two of them been there on Saturday...well, who knows.
Victims of circumstance or not, however, though we're less than halfway through the month and it doesn't seem quite time to hit the panic button just yet, things have begun to take on a whiff of heightened urgency around the Red Sox. There's a quiet note of strain in the otherwise cheerful intonations of NESN broadcasters. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous -- if only because, within this very season, we've seen this same movie before.
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