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Saturday, July 23, 2011

Red Sox 1-36: 2 is for…

The 2 World Championships won by this ownership group.

Who would have imagined? I thought it was pretty cocky of them when they released their mission statement. “5. To end the curse of the Bambino and win World Championships…” Ending the drought would have been enough. But, to add the “s” to championship was just for show. Except that it wasn’t. Similar to the way people are talking about the Cubs these days, I had heard talk during the previous ownership that the Red Sox would never win as long as fans kept coming to the park. Why spend money on your team if you’re already selling 95% of the tickets? Well, this group showed why. The additional 5%. They’ve sold every ticket they had for the last 8 years or so. They showed it was possible to not take the fans for granted. As a result, good things came.

I sometimes get labeled as a tad hypocritical when I use this group as an argument against the salary cap. Don’t get me wrong, I still think there needs to be a cap. But, I find it hard not to allow this group to benefit from their efforts. They didn’t move the team. They didn’t build a new ballpark. They didn’t do anything drastic. They just did a better job. They created the cash cow that the Red Sox are now from the same starting place everyone else has had for the last 100 years. And, because of that, they were able to sign two $100 million players in a single off-season. That’s just a job well done. The amazing thing is, they knew they could do it from the beginning. The original idea was to buy the Red Sox, improve them, and then flip them for a profit. Basically, they saw that fans were flocking to the park even as the ownership group was spitting on them. Imagine if they just stopped spitting. So, when it comes to a salary structure, I have a hard time not rewarding the ingenuity and implementation that created it all. They certainly deserve it.

2 is for 2 Championships from this ownership group…so far.

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