Alright, I'm finally ready to talk some baseball.
Not that I haven't been paying attention, quite the opposite actually. Because of my line of work, I find myself watching more baseball than ever before—on Mondays and Thursdays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, not to mention the nationally televised games on Saturday and Sunday.
I see more of Buster Olney and John Kruk then I do of my own family. I even hear Tim McCarver and Joe Morgan's voices in my dreams, which as you might guess, very quickly become nightmares.
But the real reason I haven't talked much baseball is that I haven't had a really good feel for my team, the Boston Red Sox.
Okay, I take that back, I do have a good feel for the Red Sox. And to quote the infamous words of former Arizona Cardinals football coach Denny Grenn, "They are who we thought they were." To me, that was never a playoff team.
(This is just PART of Aaron's take on the Boston Red Sox. To read this article in its ENTIRETY, please visit him at www.aarontorres-sports.com)
In my season opening podcast with my buddy Tom Finn , I made the case that I thought the Yankees would win the AL East and Tampa Bay, the wild card. When it came to the Red Sox, "pitching and defense," was a cute mantra, with many Boston fans claiming it to be the "Moneyball," of 2010.
Except as I contended, that's all well and good, except, umm, you still need to score runs to win in the regular season. You need to score when Jon Lester or John Lackey has a bad outing, or when the bullpen ruins a starters good one. You can't expect to win every game 3-1 or 2-0 or 2-1, that just isn't reality over a 162-game season.
And although the Red Sox are scoring a reasonable amount of runs (5.21 per game), there never seems to be a rhyme or reason, or any consistency to when they'll come. The Sox might get nine today, but then score four runs total the next three nights.
They'll follow it up with 12 against some hopeless schmuck from Baltimore, and then go cold the following night. Watching the Red Sox, their offense really is a case of there being, "lies, damn lies, and statistics."
It was with that semi-pessimistic (but ultimately realistic) outlook, that I headed to Fenway Park on Sunday night for the Sox-Yankees tilt. Truthfully, I was expecting the worst. And when I say the worst, I'm not just talking about the play on the field, but everything off of it too.
I live an hour and change from Boston, but in this technological world we live, get as much information as anyone actually living on Yawkey Way. The early returns weren't so good.
From what my friends were telling me, things weren't pretty in Boston when it came to the Red Sox.
I heard that fans and the media were had turned on certain under-performing players (cough...David Ortiz...cough), and were relentless in their hounding of manager Terry Francona; that some people were already giving up; that tickets to Sox games—arguably the toughest non-NFL ticket in professional sports—were flooding the market, the way you might find a bunch of available copies of Catcher in the Rye at a used book store.
It was with this trepidation that I headed up to Boston Sunday night. For the first time in recent memory, I wasn't sure to expect.
After all that anxiousness, I've got to be honest. I was surprised by what I found. In a good way...
(To read the REMAINDER of Aaron's article, including his take on Sunday's big victory over the Yankees, please click here , or visit him at www.aarontorres-sports.com .
Also, for his thoughts on all things sports, make sure to follow him on Twitter @Aaron_Torres )
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