Boston Red Sox

Just when local sportswriters were trying to come up with some new headlines for the Red Sox losing streak, the team came up with a win, negating hours of hard work by writers across the nation.

Pessimistic Sox-haters will say it’s only one game. They may go into another tailspin and the following headlines remain fitting and proper with a horrendous start.

Some of the headlines considered by hard-working sportswriters and editors include:

April 8th, 2011, a day that will live in infamy. It's the day Manny Ramirez officially decided to hang up the spikes. 

This is neither a time to complain about Manny's faults nor a time to debate just how much Manny's legacy has been affected—it's a time to appreciate the career of one of the most feared right-handed hitters to ever step foot into a major league batting box.

Mad Magazine should feature Manny Ramirez on their covers. He’s one of the original Boston Red Sox Idiots. And, now we have confirmation he is crazy as a Looney Toon.

Imagine having been banned once for 50 games for using a forbidden substance, and then to use the proverbial putative something again.

Imagine being so stupid that you are caught once more with hormones, steroids or the creeping crud inside you.

Get ready, folks, for the other pink sox to drop.

Remember back in 2004 and 2007 when practically everybody not working for Everybody's Sox Patriots Network (including many who only days ago were yet again spewing the "best team ever" Red Sox spin) were publicly broaching the issue of drug testing for Manny, his longtime roommate Papi and some of their other bloated Beantown buddies?

(Try Google Archive if your memory needs a jolt.)

It's just "Manny being Manny."

Over Manny Ramirez's 19 year career, this catchphrase embodied who he was, a free spirit that could not be tamed. Like his personality, his bat was also a force that could not be tamed in his prime.

With a .312 lifetime batting average and 555 home runs, Ramirez established himself as one of the greatest and most feared hitters during our time, being selected to the All-Star Game 12 times.

Most of the self-proclaimed "experts" have already conceded the 2011 American League pennant to the Boston Red Sox. Some more conservative pundits have held back, predicting that the Red Sox will win only the Eastern Division crown, but cautioning their audience that, as Joe Torre was fond of saying, the playoffs are a crap shoot, meaning that a pennant cannot ever be predicted.

On Wednesday, I wrote that it was too early to leap off the bandwagon of the 2011 Red Sox. I still believe that—however, alarm bells have started to ring as the 0-6 Sox limp home to Fenway Park to face their hated rival, the New York Yankees.

The vaunted offense of the Sox has disappeared over the last four games.

Terry Francona and the Boston Red Sox have started the season an abysmal 0-6.  

While it is still early, it is not too early for Francona to start playing around with his lineup.  The Sox have a bevvy of versatile hitters capable of hitting in different lineup slots.

It's been five years since the big trade of the 2005 offseason, in which the Florida Marlins sent starting ace Josh Beckett and third baseman Mike Lowell to the Boston Red Sox in exchange for prospects Anibal Sanchez and Hanley Ramirez.

However, which team got the better end of the deal?

The Florida Marlins?

Actually it’s a big goose egg.

Ooohh noooo, and six, but no eggroll goes with it for the Boston Red Sox.

Not since the Stock Market Crash of 1929 has prosperity disappeared so quickly in Red Sox Nation.

Variety announced its famous headline regarding Wall Street, way back when, and you can look it up, as Yogi Berra might say.