Regarding my favorite sports teams, Easy E and Fundy are constantly blowing me up with fake trades, injuries, suspensions, run-ins with the law....you name it, and they've tried to make me believe it happened. Brandon Rush got caught with a prostitute. Phil Mickelson tore both ACLs while pulling somebody out of a burning car. Chris Johnson got arrested with 50 kilos in the trunk. Steve McNair was killed in a murder-suicide by his mistress (Oh wait, that one was real? Too soon?) With them, no lie is too much of a stretch.
So on Friday evening, I had just finished a round of golf and I was enjoying some beers on the country club patio with Hendo, Matty P, Blaine, Ben, and Wardo. I had been off the grid for awhile, but earlier that afternoon, the last I had heard was that the Dodgers had put in a waiver claim on Adrian Gonzalez, so there may have been some trade talks going on. So when those two idiots called me and were yelling over each other that the Red Sox were trying to trade Adrian Gonzalez AND Carl Crawford AND Josh Beckett AND Nick Punto in one fell swoop, can you really blame me for telling them to STFU, and asking Easy E if he actually knows how the waiver wire works? My Kansas buddies overheard my phone conversation, and we all had a good laugh at my moron North Dakota friends and their drunken shenanigans. Three things in my defense:
1. Easy E doesn't, in fact, know how the waiver wire works.
2. It was Fundy's bachelor party weekend, so I was already on DEFCON 2 alert that these guys would be screwing with me somehow via drunk phone calls.
3. This is probably the single most ridiculous, completely-out-of-nowhere trade in baseball history.
I told Easy E and Fundy I owed them an apology for berating them in front of my friends when I turned out to be wrong, so here it is. (Even though I'm pretty sure the Boy Who Cried Wolf didn't get an apology from the townspeople, he just got his flock of sheep eaten by a fucking wolf).
Now, as far as the actual trade is concerned: I'm trying to talk myself into it. No matter how bad Beckett has sucked for the past year, no matter how much beer and fried chicken he consumed in the clubhouse during last year's collapse, no matter how many rounds of golf he played during the season ("My off days are my off days!")....I can't get on board with trading him. He is most likely my all-time favorite pitcher-- the only possible competition being Roger Clemens when I was six years old, but I mostly loved him because I had a strange obsession with the letter R when I was really young. My favorite ninja turtle was Raphael; my imaginary friend's name was Roger Sanchelly; I strolled around wearing a yellow baseball hat with nothing but the letter 'R' on it....the whole thing was kinda weird. But yet I digress. Bottom line, I hate that my boy Beckett got shipped out. Remember in the 2007 ALCS, when Cleveland brought in Beckett's ex-girlfriend to sing the national anthem before Game 5 with the Sox down 3-1 in the series, and he sat there and smirked and nodded during the whole performance, like OK, fuckers, I see what you're doing here, then came out and struck out like 12 dudes and completely shut the Indians down, and the Sox went on to win the series? Beckett has plenty of spite in his tank, and he's going to empty it out now.
As far as Gonzalez and Crawford, you just know those two are going to blow up for the Dodgers (while Crawford is injured until next year, Gonzo already started with a three-run donger in his first at-bat.) For whatever reason, the Sox are great at knowing when to let a player walk in free agency, letting another team throw big money at the guy right before his skills start to erode (Pedro, Johnny Damon, Jason Bay, etc.) But when the Sox trade somebody....heads up, it's about to start raining baseballs in the bleachers (Manny, Youkilis, Josh Reddick, etc.)
In summation: it's never bad to shed $260 million in salaries, and the prospects the Sox got in return from the Dodgers sound pretty legit (Rubby!) and clearly the team needed some kind of new direction here....but I can't lie and say that I'm happy about this deal. What a mess the last 12 months have been for Red Sox Nation.
Last thought: as I've been saying for about a year BEFORE he retired: make Jason Varitek the manager!
