Red Sox happenings

Congrats to Jacoby on his first Gold Glove (Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor and used with permission)

We have Gold Gloves!

Jacoby Ellsbury won his first, Dustin Pedroia his second and Adrian Gonzalez his third.  Let us rejoice in meaningless awards (with all due respect to our three winners who genuinely did good enough glove work to win the award…the fact that Derek Jeter has five of them including, inexplicably, last year will always make me think very little of the award generally).

On Monday the Red Sox spent roughly nine hours interviewing Philadelphia Phillies bench coach Pete Mackanin for the manager’s position.  Yesterday John Lackey underwent Tommy John Surgery and today Milwaukee Brewers batting coach (and former Red Sox third base coach) Dale Sveum will go through the interview process for Terry Francona’s job.

Lackey’s surgery, reportedly, went well. The surgery means he’ll miss the entire 2012 season and possibly some of 2013. There are still three years and $46 million left on his contract.  I’ve been supportive of Lackey and I’ve been hard on Lackey…and all I can say about this is I hope it freaking works and he comes back in 2013 the pitcher I thought he would be when he signed on with the Red Sox.  I choose to be hopeful instead of negative.  Eventually something has to go right with this guy, yes?

Ben Cherington has promised that there will be possibly four or five more candidates to interview…unlike many, I’m not entirely against the idea of Dale Sveum, I have to admit.  I like the idea of someone who is already familiar with the organization coming on and I’m okay without the team getting a big name manager.  Of course, with Tony LaRussa announcing his retirement there has been a lot of fan speculation that he could come to Boston.  I’ve already stated if that ever happens I might have to become an Orioles fan.  (I should also state that I don’t believe for a minute that it would happen.)

I leave you with some Adrian Gonzalez quotes because, thanks to Peter Abraham, he took a lot of grief for his comments about it being God’s plan after the season ended and I think many folks have it in their heads that he doesn’t care about winning or losing which is, to be blunt, horse pucky:

“The only thoughts right now is trying to do next year what St. Louis did this year, and try to win a World Series. That’s the only goal,” Gonzalez said. “We’re talking about the Gold Glove, and personal accomplishments are great, but the only thing that really matters to us is winning a World Series and getting to the playoffs first and foremost, which we weren’t able to do this year.

The only thing on my mind right now is what I can do to help the team. Hopefully, everybody else on the team is doing the same thing, and next year we can come in hungrier than we were this year so we can actually get it done.”

The awards, however meaningless these awards have become, are well deserved by our fellas and I congratulate them all.  I’m looking forward to the resolution of the manager situation so I can properly start looking forward to Truck Day!

2 comments for “Red Sox happenings

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *