The Red Sox are on the clock.
Tick. Tick. Bust.
100 days from today, they’ll be swinging wooden bats in the playoffs or 3-woods from the first tee.
Perhaps a few players can be part of the new Fenway Sports Group team in Tiger and Rory’s indoor quasi-virtual TGL golf venture. A press release/news story announcing the deal first appeared in the Pizzuti-Henry Post on Monday.
John Henry and Tom Werner heralded “Boston’s” entry in the new golf entity. It plays on 15 consecutive Monday nights after the Super Bowl, will utilize a venue in West Palm Beach, Fla., and is linked with the PGA Tour.
Werner appeared on CNBC to hype TGL.
The league will feature “the best golfers in the world,” Werner said.
That means LIV and let live.
No word if John and Tom will be hanging with the Saudi Crown Prince and Jay Monahan in the virtual owner’s box. Thank goodness they won’t have to worry about getting through airport security with that crowd. We wouldn’t want to profile anyone. Especially the folks who brought us 9-11.
“We are excited for this new journey as one of the six inaugural TGL teams in honor of a city whose love and passion for sports is unparalleled. Through this new, tech-focused version of the game, New England sports fans will soon have a team of world-class PGA TOUR players to cheer for and redefine for this community what it means to play the game in the modern era. We owe tremendous thanks to Tiger, Rory, and Mike for creating this innovative new league and allowing us to be present at its creation. We are excited to reveal more details later this summer and fall when we’ll unveil an official name and team members who will represent this great city and region.” Henry and Werner said in a news release.
That’s 122 words, according to Microsoft Word and Mrs. Fitzgerald. She was my second-grade teacher at Brackett School in Arlington and taught our class to count into the triple digits.
That’s also 122 more words than Henry has spoken on the record about the Red Sox since February. Silence is compliance.
Meanwhile, reports from across the Pond have Henry’s Reds of Liverpool flirting with soccer great Kylian Mbappe for a cost of $329 million.
The Red Sox? They have Pickleball at Fenway next month.
What about signing Ohtani this winter? Sho-hei me the money and I’ll believe it.
As the 2023 baseball season reaches halftime tomorrow against the Marlins, the Red Sox continue to flounder. Boston has been swimming upstream since the team sailed north from Fort Myers.
Boston will either be .500 or close to it after 81 games. That’s the line between a literal or metaphorical definition of “mediocrity.”
The Red Sox are mathematically certain to begin the second half of this season in last place in the American League East.
Thank you again, Mrs. Fitzgerald.
The SS Bloom has been ripped apart by the ferocious currents in the AL East. If only the Red Sox could sink into the American League Central. Never mind the fact that they dropped four out of five to Minnesota and Chicago in the past week.
Anything to make us care beyond the over 77 wins and the +205 we got on the season series with the Yankees.
Boston’s inconsistencies and lack of baseball acumen have become agonizing to witness.
Chaim Bloom’s seat is hotter than Taylor Swift tickets.
Or at least should be.
The last time the Red Sox fired their general manager it came after a Sunday night loss to the Yankees on Sept. 8, 2019. Dave Dombrowski didn’t even make it to October given how far he and ownership had fallen out of sync.
Bloom doesn’t have that problem. He is executing the plan. He’s just not that good at it. His signings and deals are a cauldron of hit-and-miss propositions. For every Justin Turner, there’s Corey Kluber.
What about Brayan “Baby Pedro” Bello? Well, he was signed by Dombrowski in 2017.
Belichickian genius.
And someone is going to have to answer for Xander Bogaerts, in much the same way Carlo had to answer for the hit on Sonny.
The loss of Bogaerts has been catastrophic, if not generational. Sure, Trevor Story has been hurt. But the best ability is availability. Boston has used five players at second base and six players at shortstop in its first 79 games. Bogaerts started 60 of the Padres’ first 69 games at short.
The Red Sox defense is an embarrassment to tee-ballers. Boston committed the most errors (51) and owned the lowest fielding percentage (.981) in the American League through 79 games.
Henry isn’t going to fire himself. And as he famously told us last winter, “it’s expensive to have baseball players.”
When the rose finally comes off the Bloom, don’t expect a shift in the prevailing Jersey Street financial mentality. The Red Sox are 13th in MLB payroll this year, between the Cubs and White Sox. Second-city all the way around. That’s not going to change on the upside anytime soon.
Mbappe isn’t cheap. And who’s going to pay Rickie Fowler to lead off for the Boston Stickmen?
Money cannot buy love or happiness in baseball. Just ask the Mets. But as we’ve noted countless times in this space and elsewhere since the 2018 World Series, the Red Sox have become just another line on the Fenway Sports Group annual budget.
The Red Sox fall somewhere between Liverpool and the Pittsburgh Penguins, or Tiger and Rory’s newest golf entanglement, on the FSG Christmas card list.
The Red Sox owner doesn’t put baseball first.
Why should we?
The good news is that the Red Sox won’t have to wait until January to start playing golf. There will be plenty of tee times available on Oct. 2.
Bill Speros (@RealOBF and @BillSperos) can be reached at bsperos1@gmail.com