Champions No More

Here are 5 thoughts in the aftermath of the Boston Bruins reign as Stanley Cup Champions coming to a close last night in overtime against the Washington Capitals:

1. Good bye Tim Thomas and Thanks for the memories- The two-time Vezina Trophy and 2011 Conn Smythe Trophy winner was arguably the main cog in the Bruins run to the Cup last season, but seemed to wear down as this season went along (as did most of his teammates). The goalie was not at his outstanding best in the playoff series against the Capitals as evidenced by some soft goals, including Alex Ovechkin’s go-ahead goal in Game 6 off the faceoff.

There should be no hard feelings from Bruins fans or from Thomas himself, but it is time for Boston to look to the future and to promote Tukka Rask to the number-one spot. Also, there is plenty of value in trading Thomas and he could provide key pieces to help the Bruins make the playoffs in 2012-13. It’s been a great run from the porn-stache, but winning organizations know when to move forward.

2. Has the love affair with Milan Lucic ended- Lucic is one of those players that everyone tells you is great, but when you actually watch him, you’re left completely underwhelmed. After the fifth backhanded, no-look pass straight to the stick of a Capitals player ended a Bruins attack, there was notable frustration from fans at the Garden and on Twitter (we’ll get to THOSE fans on Twitter later). It was an unforced error by Lucic that set up the first Capitals goal and, while it was clearly a bad bounce, the nonchalance that Lucic seems to play with doesn’t match his ability to positively affect the outcome.

I know Bruins fans love to wear his shirt and love when he runs over goalies or puts Flyers into the boards well after the play, but these aren’t positive contributions and he is stalling the progress of his linemates. He has the tools but has been a disappointment in the playoffs.

3. Have we seen the emergence of Tyler Seguin- While two goals in seven games doesn’t seem like a great output for a forward with Seguin’s skills, the diving, scrappy goal he scored in the second period to tie the game showed a desire and willingness to sacrifice that had been missing from his game. Seguin played very well in the final three games and was very unlucky to not have more goals in the series. The combination of fortuitous defending and the great play of Capitals’ goalie Braden Holtby kept his numbers down. Still, Seguin showed more fighting spirit and (although I don’t have stats to back this up) hit more players in the series than he had all season.

The best part about Seguin’s play in the series was that this should have been his freshman year in college. The future looks bright.

4. Great Cup defense- While it won’t go down in the history books as the greatest season for the franchise, the Bruins showed great determination to battle the fatigue of two extra months of playoff hockey that allowed them to win the Cup. A slow start was followed by a dominating stretch where the Bruins led the league in goals scored and fewest goals allowed. Eventually, injuries and plain tiredness would slow them down, but the Stanley Cup hangover probably gives the team a pass. The Capitals played strong and smart and rode a hot goaltender into the second round and the disappointment of losing Game 7 shouldn’t take away from how well this team played over the course of the season.

5. THOSE fans- I use the term fan loosely. The morons that took to Twitter in the drunken hours following Game 7 and decided to racially abuse Capitals forward Joel Ward have embarrassed not just themselves (if that was possible) but the entire city of Boston and state of Massachusetts (probably all of New England).

Barry Bonds made a comment in 2004 about black players not wanting to come to a racist city like Boston. A city dealing with the racial history of the Yawkey years and still stigmatized by the 1974 Busing Crisis and its aftermath, Boston seemed to have moved on from its history. The Pedro Martinez/Manny Ramirez years at Fenway and the Big Three era had given all of Boston a warm, fuzzy feeling about their newfound color blindness. Obviously nothing has changed. Maybe Barry was right after all.

The biggest problem is that Twitter (and the internet in general) allows a modicum of anonymity and distance for these morons to spout whatever racist crap comes to mind. It is easy to be abusive when Joel Ward isn’t standing in front of you ready to knock you unconscious. In England, they prosecute those that racially abuse soccer players (or other fan groups) on Twitter. It might be time for the US to start looking into cracking down as well.

Last night the Bruins went out like winners, giving it their all on the ice. Bruins fans showed that they are nothing but losers.

2011 Red Sox Collapse

It’s been 77 days since the regular season came to a close on September 28^th and it has taken me just about that long to collect my thoughts on the atrocity of blowing a 9 ½ game lead in a single month.

The two worst Red Sox collapses in the time that I have been a conscious fan of the team, which discounts 1986 because I was 7 and I’m not sure I even watched the games, have come during two of my most difficult Falls personally. The team’s effort seemed to strongly mirror my own attitude.

2003 will always be the worst collapse because everything seemed perfect. The glorious success that all Red Sox fans had hoped for was in our grasp and our ace, our favorite, Pedro had put the Yankees in their place, but...

By the time Boone ended the season I had left my friends to go home because I just couldn’t take the pain of the inevitable loss.

For reasons I’m not getting into here, 2003 was by far the worst time for me personally and, by a degree of magnitude, is far worse than the current situation. The same can be said for the record-setting atrocity that was the Red Sox in September.

Unlike 2003, there was always something about this year’s squad that seemed weak. The lineup was amazing. Jacoby Ellsbury and Adrien Gonzalez were legitimate MVP candidates, Marco Scutaro dominated the final month, David Ortiz found the fountain of youth (fingers crossed that it wasn’t the fountain of PED but at this point would anything surprise you?), and the combination of Jared Saltalamacchia and Jason Varitek combined to be a mostly productive catcher. Despite the missing in action JD Drew (finally giving up on the pretense of trying to play once a week) and Kevin Youkilis (karma’s a bitch) the Sox were an offensive machine.

The problem that everyone could see coming, but no one wanted to admit, was that the pitching staff sucked. John Lester regressed into a nibbler and always seemed to be pitching out of jams and seemed incapable of getting into the 7^th inning. Josh Beckett seemed to be back to his best but there has been confusion on whether or not this was just a lot of good luck or great stuff (and you could read all of the articles on the subject in the time it took him to throw a pitch). Injuries took their toll leaving the fans to watch Kyle Weiland, Andrew Miller, Eric Bedard, and Tim Wakefield try to scrape enough innings to finish the season.

Then there was John Lackey. I want to be sympathetic as he obviously pitched through a lot of pain both physically and emotionally, but the stink of his starts (6.41 ERA, .302 BAA, 1.62 WHIP) won’t be washed away simply with pity. There was never enough blame to go around after he would allow 11 ringing line drives in 5 innings. It was always the stadium design, poor defense, or just bad luck, never just bad pitches left over the middle of the plate. His elbow was always great during bullpen sessions just not when there was an actual hitter at the plate. I hope he comes out in 2013 and is lights out, but I’d be just as happy to see him pitching for the Nationals when that happens.

I don’t want to go into the behind-the-scenes drama that has engulfed the team since the season ended except to say that I can’t erase the image of our starters lined up on the couch in the clubhouse smothered in empty KFC buckets and gravy looking like White Goodman from the final scene of Dodgeball.

It was time for Theo and Tito to move on. It’s been a great nine-year run but new energy was needed. Thanks for introducing the Duck Boat parade to Boston and good luck but it is time to find the next great manager. I’m disappointed that they didn’t take the chance on Sandy Alomar, Jr. he could have been the kind of ex-player/leader that this team was crying out for. Bobby Valentine will keep the seat warm for two years, hopefully for the second choice way back in 2003, Joe Maddon.

The front office is a disaster but the lineup is going to be pretty close to what it was this year. Right field will be up for grabs and Ryan Kalish may finally get his chance at a regular roster spot. If Carl Crawford returns after a season of swinging the bat like Bernie Mac in Mr. 3000 (RIP) then the outfield should be solid. I would love for them to try and trade Youk but who wants an oft injured, angry, teammate bashing, and regressing third baseman? I’m not sold on the return of Kelly Shoppach but look around the league and find more than a handful of catchers that you really want behind the plate everyday.

The focus needs to be on the rotation. There is talk of turning Daniel Bard and Alfredo Aceves into starters, Clay Buchholz should return from injury, Junichi Tazawa will get a bigger look and now a closer has been brought in from the Astros. There is no reason for the panic that has engulfed Red Sox Nation.

The fans have returned to the pre-2004 levels of despair over what has transpired since September 1^st. There has to be the recognition that after the collapse of 2003, when it seemed that the only chance we had of ever seeing the Red Sox make the World Series had slipped from our grasp, the team was even better in 2004 and took home the title. Relax fans it will be better again, the team will regroup, the core will return chastened, and the Red Sox will battle for the playoffs just like they always do.

Pandora In the Time of Melancholy

Some days listening to Pandora can be a destructive exercise. Beautiful songs of longing or emotional impact turn into excuses for self-pity and a loathing of what the world has done to you. It’s never a reminder of the mistakes you make and the situations that you either passed up or botched, it is ALWAYS the world’s fault for your current predicament.

Depression is an evil condition particularly when it is coupled with the irrational delusion that somehow you have no control over the things happening around you. Heartbreak, unemployment, empty bank accounts are horrible things to deal with (especially all at once) but lying around listening to sad music and feeling bad for yourself won’t change anything.

Unfortunately this has been my stock response to trouble for as long as I can remember. I imagine that even as a baby in my crib that instead of crying or screaming when I had crapped my diaper I instead lay in my own excrement blaming the world for my upcoming rash. Why put up a fight and try to improve things? Then I would lose the power of being a martyr. Suddenly I wouldn’t have other things to blame it on but rather have to accept that maybe I had a hand in my own downfall and then my situation would lack the proper context to draw sympathy from those around me.

Over the years I have gained the wisdom to recognize this behavior in myself, although unfortunately not the wisdom to prevent it or stop it, which requires a much higher level of enlightenment than I’ve yet mustered.

In many respects this type of apathy and cynicism made me the perfect pre-2004 Red Sox fan. I expected failure because the world would never allow me the joy of seeing my team come up victorious and in fact would force me to lose in diabolical and heart-rending situations. This perfectly suited my negative outlook and gave me one more reason to continue down my path of mediocrity. The end result was always going to be a loss no matter what so don’t try too hard.

The Red Sox found a way to turn things around and created a situation where the future was always a bright one. Personally I thought I had as well. This September ripped the optimism back out of my psyche and brought it back to 2003 levels. Strangely there is some comfort in this situation as at least I can point to specific reasons why my current outlook on things is so bleak, but after feeling good for a little while it is very difficult to consider going back to a prolonged run of feeling miserable.

Back to the Pandora. Much like the Red Sox have been, music is always tied into certain memories that create the conditions on whether or not I like a song. Nostalgia and music is covered brilliantly by Chuck Klosterman for Grantland. I try to listen to the AvettBrothers channel and each song that once was full of intrinsic heartwarming melodies is now a hand holding my head underwater until the bubbles finally stop. Dramatic I know. These were songs that helped define a new outlook on where my life was headed and without changing a single word are now painful reminders of failure.

This Red Sox season held a similar fate. The team was rolling and everyone knew this was the team to beat despite injuries, and apparently drunken binges in the clubhouse, and the fans trusted that the team would give us a collective happy ending. Then it all dropped off a cliff. Suddenly we watched with horror as an entire month of ineptitude led into the worst/best night of baseball ever.

            Now we’re left to pick up the empty beer cans and cardboard Popeye’s containers and try to remember the good times while Ray Lamontagne and A FineFrenzy urge us to shed some tears and move on.

*Just to make it clearer these were all songs that came on Pandora while I was working on this post today, all of them are particularly poignant to the past year, none of them were the songs that originally prompted me to write. Pandora is scary in its cruelty...

The Real Fans?

It's easier being a fan on days like this.

My grandfather was stationed in England, just outside London, during the Vietnam War. Unbeknownst to him this would lead, some 40 plus years later, to me being a diehard and fanatic Manchester United supporter. See, my grandfather was able to witness the historic mid-60’s triumvirate of George Best, Bobby Charlton, and Denis Law and was enthralled by the style with which they played the game. As a kid I found a packet of holographic player cards that my grandfather had collected. The long hair and ridiculous short shorts, the logo, the cool nickname, everything looked so interestingly foreign to my 10 year old self.

Little did I know that 10 years later I would start playing soccer thanks to a college girlfriend and a co-ed indoor league in Warwick that would be my Sunday (and sometimes Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday) refuge for over a decade. Once I started playing the game it was inevitable that I would be enthralled by the sport and I had to seek it out at the highest level (sorry MLS but not quite). Thanks to my grandfather’s stories and collectibles there was only one team that I could support.

No one roots for this team but we don't care.

(Now this is a far-cry from the love affair that I have developed with the team in the present day , which includes following every soccer writer I can find on Twitter, keeping the transfer blog bookmarked, and watching any game that might be on TV including the Spanish-language telecasts of the Copa America or under-20 World Cup. Incidentally, though I don’t understand a word that they’re saying I still think the announcers were much better than those on Fox Soccer. I even had my girlfriend read Fever Pitch to get a better understanding of my mentality, then told her to read Juliet Naked as well just to show that I wasn’t just a troglodyte sports fan. Not sure it worked.)

Following Manchester United, and European soccer in general, has taken its place alongside the Red Sox and Celtics and I consider my knowledge of the subjects to be well-above the common fan. (This is when we get to the actual point of the blog, by the way.)

Why do I always consider myself a “better” fan than everyone else? Why do the “pink hats”, the people singing “Sweet Caroline” (singing it karaoke-style while wasted in Vegas doesn't count), or people who don’t know where we picked up Mike Aviles bother me? Why should I care? Why does it have to be a competition? Shouldn't being a fan be about the communion of fun and common interest, not about the depth of feeling that any interest might arouse?

The other night at Good Times (which is ironically never a good time) I kept shaking my head, laughing, and/or getting actually upset at the ill-informed comments of the drunks at the bar. I don’t know why the random Tigers fan who seemed to know nothing about the Tigers other than that they don’t serve Bud at Tigers Stadium (he was old but I assumed he was talking about Comerica Park not flashing back to the ’84 World Series) upset me. I can’t get upset because he works all day and doesn’t spend every waking hour studying the ticker on ESPN.com or watching Baseball Tonight.

There isn’t a single person in Manchester (England not New Hampshire) who would think that I was anything but a carpet-bagging Yankee pink hat for Man U just because I live in the US. I wasn’t brought up with stories of Busby’s Babes and I didn’t get to see the ’99 Champions League win as it was happening so I don’t count as a “real” Manc. That’s basic English elitism about US soccer fans but aren’t I (and a lot of Red Sox writers too, I’m looking at you Pete Abraham and Bob Ryan) being just as elitist about people who aren’t fanatics about the teams we hold dear?

Here's to you John  Lackey!

While I’m slamming my fist down, having my night ruined, and getting pissed every time that John Lackey pitches most fans are going to be grabbing a beer and talking with the people near them about how great it is to be out watching the game. It’s time to grow up and stop giving a shit about how little most people know about the Red Sox or baseball history. It’s time to embrace the “pink hats” as all part of the game, just as it’s time to stop holding a grudge because people are ignorant. Fine, you might not be the same type of fan as me (you probably have a lot more fun being a fan) but if you have any questions feel free to ask.

In the end, I’m the one with the answers and the issues.