but this is too perfect

Sounds like Ellsbury wants out about now. He’s arbitration eligible next year, and they’ve got him through 2014, but I wonder if an unhappy player might lead to a trade.

This looks like it will continue for many more seasons, and we thought there were problems over here.

What to make of all of this? Old-style Boston blood-letting, I reckon. Not to say that the things listed above weren’t all real problems. They were. But they’re all things you never hear about if, over the course of six months, the Red Sox win one more game and make the playoffs.

And about a similar moralistic besmirching of the Yankees by the New York media:

Just once — once! — I’d like to see someone identify a killer instinct before the end of a team’s season rather than after it. Because until that happens I’m going to believe something very shocking: that stuff like this is all ex-post-facto narrative building, not baseball analysis that is useful in the slightest.

I’d still rather have good baseball players than an uplifting clubhouse full of wholesome family men. It worked for the ‘86 Mets, and they’re just the ones we’ve heard about.

They were better than the ’27 Yankees! Better than the Boys of Summer! Better than The Big Red Machine!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Suck it, Boston!