Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.smugmug.com and used with permission.
I had decided quietly that I was going to be okay with the Red Sox not signing Jason Varitek this season. Not that I don’t love the Captain, I do, but he’s getting older and the Sox already didn’t sign Victor Martinez so I was going to be okay with them using Jarrod Saltalamacchia as their main catcher and some other player as the backup. It was one of the scenarios I had already braced myself to deal with. Then Theo goes and messes everything up by re-signing Tek for another year.
To say I surprised myself with my reaction is an understatement. The first inkling I got was when Peter Gammons tweeted about it yesterday and my initial response, without any thought, was great joy.  I make no secret of my fondness for the players and more often than not I tend to side with players even if it isn’t the best thing for the team…but I wasn’t feeling that way with Tek until I actually read that he was coming back. I guess a friend on Twitter put it best:
Varitek and Wakefield give me the warm and fuzzy feelings I miss sometimes when viewing sports.
Maybe it really is as simple as that? (For the record, as ready as I was to say goodbye to Tek, I’m not prepared for Wake. Maybe that will come at the end of the 2011 season but right now it’s nowhere in sight.)
So we get our Captain for another year and baseball is in the news in December. Those Varitek t-shirts I saw on the clearance rack on Monday at Sears weren’t the omen I thought they could be. This is a good way to feel right now. I like the absence of drama.
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