future of Boston baseball<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a future that will be epitomized by Carl Crawford, at least in the short-term.<\/p>\nAs he prepared to patrol left field for The Olde Towne Team on Monday, Glen Ordway\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s well-worn exclamation came to mind on a couple of occasions: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we ever get players like that?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
It was a puzzler that be-deviled us for years: Why didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we EVER get players like that, in the prime of their careers? After Yaz, we watched in bemusement as players like Jim Rice and Mike Greenwell and Manny Ramirez patrolled left field \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to say their defense was a sometimes-painul adventure would be an understatement of incredible proportions. We watched with incredulity as former GM Lou Gorman wondered aloud, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What would we do with Willie McGee?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, only to turn around and sign 1B Jack Clark to a multi-year contract\u00c2\u00a0just one\u00c2\u00a0year later.<\/p>\n
And so today I thought about the long and winding road. I considered that Yaz had moved to first base by the time I appreciated the finer points of the game. I contemplated Rice\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s indifference, Greenwell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s largely-ineffectual efforts, and Ramirez\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 abject incompetence.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then I started fantasizing about Crawford and Ellsbury and Kalish.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d-<\/p>\n
While\u00c2\u00a0Monday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s contest wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t REALLY Crawford\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s debut in a Boston uniform (I reserve such designations for regular season games), it had tremendous meaning for the new left fielder, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was just trying to take it all in\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 still thinking \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI am actually in a Red Sox uniform,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and thinking about all that stuff. I was just kind of trying to take it all in and trying to focus on the game at the same time.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
He continued, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It felt good just to put on the uniform, to finally get out on the field and play a game. I was a little nervous at first, but I was happy to get (the first game) out of the way.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
There will be other, more meaningful, firsts this season: Opening Day, the home opener, the first game against the NY Yankees, etc. They will all mean more than today. And in all of them, he will fly around the bases\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and fly around the outfield. He will make it look effortless\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and he will be brilliant.<\/p>\n
He and Ellsbury and Pedroia and Kalish will soon help Red Sox Nation forget about the past, except to know the current front office has learned from the past and then turned the page on it.<\/p>\n
Said Crawford, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to play the way I play\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to have the big guys behind me, so I can still steal and get pitches for those guys to hit\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the potential of it? The sky is the limit.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The page has been turned. The year I became a baseball fan (1967), Red Sox players arrived at spring training hoping to avoid 100 losses and get out of the basement in the American League\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 this year, several players arrived in camp talking about the possibility of winning 100 games. This year, more than any other in my life time, the sky truly appears to be the limit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Throughout the years, the last few generations of baseball fans in Boston became accustomed to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Red Sox brand of baseball\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, characterized by slower, plodding players who routinely traveled 90 feet at a time around the base paths, except when they (or a teammate) launched a baseball over the Green Monster or into the right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":780,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[47,21225,12875,589,2295,1927,21227,1568,12876,1936,191,5666,42,12878,588,12879,259,12880,12881,12882,12883,630,12884],"class_list":["post-12341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-history","tag-bosox","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-carl-crawford","tag-carl-yastrzemski","tag-fantasy-baseball","tag-fenway-park","tag-higs-tickets","tag-jim-rice","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-mike-greenwell","tag-mlb","tag-nesn","tag-red-sox","tag-red-sox-1-fan","tag-red-sox-nation","tag-rotisserie-baseball","tag-sox-1-fan","tag-sox1fan","tag-sox1fan-comment-contest","tag-ted-williams","tag-wrko"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/780"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}