DK's Dugout

In the last issue of Barstool Sports I wrote an article titled “Early Season Observations from Fenway”. At the time I wrote it the Red Sox were riding a five-game winning streak and had outscored the opposition 41-21 over the previous week. Things were going smoothly, wins were coming easy, and I got greedy. For that, I apologize.

These wins against the likes of Tampa and Toronto were not just easy they were also uninteresting. As much of a fan of the Red Sox as I am (which is about as big of a fan as they come) I am an equally huge fan of the sport of baseball. I love it. I love watching it and I love analyzing it. I love to dissect managerial decisions and strategy and determine whether or not I agree with the manager’s moves (which more often than not I do not).

But in blowout wins there is little to no strategy involved. The manager puts out a lineup, they rack up lots of runs, substitutions and pitching changes are seemingly meaningless and that’s that. Whether or not a batter should have taken a pitch, a runner should have attempted to go for an extra base or a fielder should have been positioned in a certain spot doesn’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things during a blowout win. Certainly it’s nice to have chalked up a win, but as a hardcore baseball fan these blowouts don’t enable me to feel part of the game. My self-proclaimed baseball expertise is basically rendered useless.

And so, after the Sox swept a three-game series with the Devil Rays by a combined score of 19-3, I complained about Boston winning too easily. I said I was starting to prefer losing an exciting strategy-filled game to the Yankees as opposed to blowing out other teams, since the losses to New York were simply more interesting to watch. It is a mistake I will never make again.

Following that article’s publication the Red Sox went on to lose six of their next nine games, and at least half of those losses would fall under the “interesting/exciting” category. They lost back-to-back games to Tampa by one run and I realized very quickly that I preferred the 10-0 domination of the D-Rays I had witnessed just a week earlier to these one-run losses.

During this post-article era Boston also lost two of their starting pitchers, David Wells and Curt Schilling, for an undetermined amount of time due to injury. Apparently there would not be too many blowout wins on the horizon…is this really what I had wished for? I did ask in that article “how insane is that?” that I would prefer to lose to the Yanks to blowing out the D-Rays, and I received several emails informing me it was “very insane”. I just want to reassure everyone it was only temporary insanity…I’m better now.

When things started to head south for the Sox due to losing games on the field and losing players to injuries off of it, I found myself reminding Sox fans that thought the sky was falling that “it’s only April, relax”. The goal for the Red Sox (and us fans) is simple: to win the World Series, and that can’t be done in April. The only thing that can be done at this point of the season is to start getting the team in position to make the post-season, which means racking up wins, be it by one, three or thirteen runs.

And the fact that a game ends in a blowout does not mean there isn’t things that happen within it that can excite me. Regardless of score it is always fun to watch: V-Tek do an unbelievable job of blocking the plate to prevent a run, Manny smashing a homer out of the entire park that threatens to reach the Mass Pike, Trot playing like a maniac while smashing into walls and getting filthy with headfirst dives, The ER turning in a highlight play at short with seemingly no effort, Bronson freezing a batter with a nasty curve or Timmy Wake making professional hitters look like they’ve never batted before when his knuckleball is on.

And as fun as it is to get excited about those things it gets my adrenaline going just as much when I’m upset about what’s going on, which happens whether it’s a one or a ten run game. Why did he walk the leadoff batter of the inning? Why is nobody covering first base? How can’t a professional baseball player reach the base from there? Why won’t he swing when it’s right down the middle?

There is plenty to be excited about, good and bad, in each and every baseball game. I made the mistake of forgetting about all of the minor events that make up the big picture by focusing on only the big picture, the final score. When Kevin Millar tried to tag out the runner on a weak groundball to first last week instead of flipping to the pitcher for the easy out it reminded me that one never knows, even on what appears to be the simplest play, what will get my baseball-loving juices flowing. It is a main reason why I watch baseball and why I love it. It does not need to be a question like “why is Buckner in at first?”, “why don’t we have a real closer?”, or “why is he leaving Pedro in the game?” that brings out the baseball fanatic in me.

Baseball is a fascinating game, one that I love so much I went on record as saying I might enjoy watching my favorite team lose to my least favorite team for the sheer excitement of the game itself. There are roughly 300 pitches in every ballgame and I could probably have an hour long discussion about each and every one, whether it was a 3-0 fastball down the middle taken for a strike or a first pitch curve that was popped up to third base. I just didn’t like feeling as if the sport I loved so much was in jeopardy of being uninteresting to me over the next five months as easy victories continued to accumulate. A few losses reminded me that will certainly not happen. I don’t need to be reminded anymore (you can go back to blowout wins again guys!).

I’m not a fan of Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis, but he certainly had it right when he said, “Just win baby!”

I do love baseball an extraordinary amount, but after thinking about the issues I had posed in my previous article further I would definitely rather see the Red Sox win an uninteresting game than lose an exciting one. Winning exciting games is obviously still the best-case scenario, but I’m not about to start getting greedy…at least not anymore. After all, there are plenty of worse ways to spend three hours than watching the Boston Red Sox show some undermanned team how it’s supposed to be done.