Levitation was one of Mike Brumley’s many tools.
The Red Sox are literally spiraling into a pit of despair. The players hate the manager. The manager hates the owners. The field crew want new rakes. The guy selling hot dogs is banging the pennant salesman’s wife. It’s been a big, messy, epic shitstorm of year thus far.
And I gotta say, for me, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
Don’t get me wrong. I bleed red and support the boys (sarcasm notwithstanding) until the math tells me it’s over. But as a guy who grew up watching some truly miserable Red Sox teams in the 80s and 90s, I was concerned that I might be taking our recent success for granted. And I never want to be that guy.
Back in the early 90s, if the Sox were out of it by June and sinking into molten lava by July, I understood. In many ways, I knew it was coming. But since 2004, let’s just say I’ve felt something different. Not a sense of entitlement… but a lack of that eerie feeling that something absolutely horrible is lurking just around the corner. Something named Mike Brumley. Or Jeff Frye. Or Jose Canseco.
If the Sox bottom out this season and hit a low water mark — lower than that achieved by the least successful Red Sox team of my lifetime, the 1992 edition — that might be just what I need. A chance to press reset and remind myself that making the playoffs is a privilege, not a right.
Oh, and just remember: lame as this season has been, we’re still not out of it.
