Now comes the hard part. Knowing we’re going to watch Red Sox baseball for the rest of our lives and it will never be able to top that.

(Left three photos via AP. 2018 via Fox.)

For more than a generation, this morning was just beyond the horizon. Always out of reach. The team that won five of the first 15 World Series disappeared for 30 years, lost a heartbreaking Game 7, disappeared for 20 more, then lost in 7 as a Cinderella and birthed the whole New England sporting culture of the last half century. The gut punches of 1975, 1978 and 1986 giving way to … let’s just call it the history you know. It all ended with what felt like the perfect two-year story arc, on a life-affirming night in the Bronx and a rainy night in St. Louis.

Except it never really ended. It was 14 years ago, but it’s never been far away from our fan conscious. It washed over 2007, a truly dominant team never entirely savored on its own merits. Even 2013, the rare champion we never saw coming given the debacle of the year before, still felt like that plucky upstart we’d built our regional identities around.

It’s finished now. A national audience would roll its eyes even to that, pointing out that this fable ended sometime far earlier into this 11-titles-in-17-years run, but there is no question that 119-57 from a $230-million juggernaut retired this underdog idea until we’re well gray and old.

So embrace it. Be the ones who suddenly got everything they always wanted and live happily ever after. It will never, never feel this good as this morning again.

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Before Game 1, random Twitter user did what random Twitter user always does: Burst the ol’ balloon.

It’s a valid point, of course. The plucky 2017 Astros and 2015 Royals were actually both below the league-average payroll when they won their most recent championships. That’s a far cry from these Red Sox, who outspent even the No. 2 Giants by $20-something million and the league average by more than Oakland spent on a playoff-worthy roster.

The Red Sox No. 1 expense, David Price, will try to pitch them to a world championship on Sunday night in Los Angeles. Their No. 2, J.D. Martinez, looks a hobbled mess at the plate, but still had a 1.031 OPS in the regular season and a 1.016 in the playoffs before slipping on second base in Game 1 against L.A. Rick Porcello, Craig Kimbrel, Chris Sale and Mookie Betts all made eight figures this season and earned every one.

And yet there we watched on Saturday night, when the big hits not delivered by 22-year-old third baseman Rafael Devers were delivered by a couple of guys who wouldn’t be here if Dave Dombrowski had just opened his wallet for Eric Hosmer.

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There was already a sort of otherworldly sense around this Red Sox season before sweeping rainbows became the norm before their World Series home games. (AP)

Champions find a way.

It’s a staple idea of commemorative magazines and season recap DVDs, because it’s a simple, undeniable concept. Banners are won in big moments, but size can be hard to judge in real time. Christian Vazquez pushing a two-out, two-strike single into right on Wednesday night didn’t much matter until the four guys after him made it the spark of a three-run, game-winning rally.

“That was such a perfect example of just grinding at-bats out,” J.D. Martinez, whose two-run bloop single made him the biggest of the four, said after Game 2. “Finding ways to get guys on and keeping the line moving.”

His Red Sox, 117 in the bag, are still two wins from declaring themselves champions in the only meaningful sense, but the blueprint has long started to form.

They’ve been finding a way since at least the home opener, when — you can be forgiven for forgetting — Tampa led 2-0 in the ninth before three straight men reached and Xander Bogaerts, after the aforementioned Martinez hit into a double play to put the game on the line, ripped a two-strike, two-out double off the Monster to tie a game the Sox won in 12 innings.

“We had three hits heading into the bottom of the ninth,” said David Price, whose team delivered four in that April frame alone and, six months later, helped secure him a second postseason win as a starter on Wednesday. “We’ve done that a couple times this year (already). That’s just what good teams do.”

Rarely quite like this. Continue reading

By my count, I wrote 50 pieces for the print Standard-Times this year. (A man’s entitled to two vacations, apparently.) You can view them all here, but here’s a quick-and-dirty list — interspersed with some GIFs, because why not — of my favorites before the calendar flips.

May 11: Patriots fans, ask yourself, what would Pedro Martinez have done?

‘Pedro’ is the pitcher telling his story, so the picture will – of course – not paint all completely. Joe Kerrigan’s treatment is best summarized in a photo caption: “My pitching coach … always had lots of theories about how I could be better. Here I am not listening to one of them.”

Martinez’s brilliance of mind and mound is on full display – we begin and end at the mango tree he so wonderfully spoke of in the heat of the 2004 ALCS. Yet so are his great contradictions: The willingness to hit people and his bristling at the reputation it brought. His deep trust in some, and deep grudges toward others.

Brady is similarly stellar, and a similar shade of gray to us on the outside.

June 2: Struggling Red Sox Have a Lot To Prove

The Red Sox averaged 93 wins a season from 2002-11, always more than the sum of their parts. Superstars carried the load, sure, but Mark Bellhorn and Bill Mueller answered the call when needed in October 2004. J.D. Drew’s 2007 grand slam? Same thing. Heck, Daisuke Matsuzaka knocked in a couple runs in Colorado.

I’m sure I’m not the only one still guilty of thinking of the franchise that way. Seeing David Ortiz and John Farrell and Dustin Pedroia, the lines connecting ’04 to ’07 to ’13 to now. It is, however, increasingly appearing a mirage. In the ninth inning of a close game, whether you walk or pitch to the opposing slugger with a base open leads to the some conclusion. At some point, someone’s got to make the play.

Junichi Tazawa didn’t in Seattle two weeks ago. Koji Uehara didn’t last weekend in Texas. The Red Sox haven’t for going on four full years, title be damned.

June 21: Let’s do something about MLB fan safety

And thus, we wait to see how baseball will react. The same sport that just this year rolled out metal detectors at every park. Detectors that, studies say, don’t really make anyone all that safer.

In the year the impending removal of Houston’s “Tal’s Hill” incline in center field brought relieved cries of “that thing was an injury risk.” An injury risk that, for all its 16 years, has caused no major injuries.

Rob Manfred can’t eliminate the risk to spectators. It’s an inherent as the risk to players by every thing they encounter. The commissioner has, though, been given an opportunity to mitigate it. To be proactive, instead of reactive in the face of as awful a story as a sport can bear. Here’s hoping he takes it.

Aug. 16: Farrell’s cancer announcement shouldn’t be about ‘perspective’

Am I quibbling, basically, about a word? I’ve been guilty of that before, and will be again. Finding something bad in what’s admittedly warm feelings? Sure, that’s one way of viewing this.

I’m just tired of the simplistic and cliché being treated as profound. Those who need to be reminded of perspective at a time like this won’t maintain that perspective long enough for it to matter.

It’s wasted words, wasted breath, no matter how many Facebook likes it nets. An exercise in self-satisfaction. As it was last time, as it will be the next time.

Sept. 13: David Ortiz changed everything

The way everything changed when the Bruins signed 14-year-old Bobby Orr for a car, a suit, some cash and some stucco on the family house. The way everything changed when the Celtics finally signed Larry Bird after spending the No. 6 pick on him 10 months earlier. The way, and this is the perfect example, everything changed when Tom Brady was written on that pick card for selection No. 199 in the 2000 NFL Draft.

It wasn’t dumb luck. There was research. There was hope. There was an expectation of success.

No one could have expected four Super Bowls. Or 500 home runs.

At the risk of doing whatever the Internet equivalent is to Vaguebooking, this has not been a good year on a personal level. I may elucidate that in the future, but for the moment, let’s just leave it at some outside-the-work issues bleeding in and really dragging me down. I was not at Fenway much. I was not terribly useful when I was there. I stunk even worse than the team stunk.

The Chad Finn shoutout on Boston.com was a really nice pick-me-up. No use denying that. I’ve never entirely had a handle on what kind of audience I actually have, but it’s always nice to realize that even now, you still exist.

Whomever you are and however many of you there are, thanks for reading and sticking around. You make me this happy.

See you next year.

Interviewing for a job at the Boston Herald, for as life-changing an event as it was, doesn’t hold a particularly sizable chunk of memory bank.

Deduction alone pins it to late August 2010, and I remember live-story editing tests involving UFC 118, MMA’s first big-time foray into Boston. (No. 143, live from Brazil, is a week from tomorrow. Pay-per-view lingers for no man.) I remember quickly deducing the good cop-bad cop dynamic between my two future bosses — one made me laugh, the other asked whether I thought I was “too good” to do the lowly agate page, one of my favorite desk duties then and now. I remember the fascination with the light-sensitive ‘Visitor’ sticker I had to wear, and with the ‘computers’ on which the paper was produced. (When they were replaced that November, I snapped a picture of a back label: “MFG DATE: OCTOBER 1991.” Given their age and the state of the office, I assume they were originally gasoline powered.)

Outside of the above quote, one specific statement rings louder than most. Hank Hryniewicz, the kinder half of the cop drama, assured me if I got the job, I would be around when the paper moved to its new offices. Didn’t know where or when, just knew that moving boxes weren’t an ‘if.’

My first day was Sept. 17, 2010. Moving day is today.

300 Harrison Ave., Boston. Better known as One Herald Square.

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For the Non-Facebook Audience: Far be it for me to start a Photoshop contest, but we’ve heard so much about all the great things Bobby Valentine can do. How come no one’s bringing up the time he ran for president?

And hey, if he fails, imagine how apt the symbolism will be!

Speaking of military history, what about when he helped establish the republic?

Breeches never looked so good.

This is what happens when I have a touch too much free time at the office. I know, I wish it happened more too.

— One more nugget from the reams of articles I dug through before penning my Bobby Valentine S-T column … from July 20, 2002, the story of how Valentine met current Red Sox shortstop Marco Scutaro.

Bobby Valentine was having lunch today at the restaurant at the hotel where the Mets are staying, watching television, when a stranger came up and sat next to him.

“Hey, Bobby. How are you?” the young man said before getting off his stool and approaching Valentine.

“Nice to meet you,” Valentine responded. “What’s your name?”

“Scutaro,” the man said.

When Valentine did not respond, the stranger went back to his seat. Finally, during a commercial break, Valentine asked: “What are you doing here? You live here?

“”No, I just got called up,” said Marco Scutaro, an infielder who was promoted from Class AAA Norfolk to replace Joe McEwing on the Mets’ roster.

The next day, the Times summed it up: “Bobby Valentine did not recognize Marco Scutaro the first time he saw him, thinking he was a friendly fan when Scutaro introduced himself last Friday at a Cincinnati restaurant, where the Mets were playing. Scutaro mumbled his name and Valentine could not understand him, perhaps because of Scutaro’s Venezuelan accent or perhaps because he was unfamiliar with the name.”

Scutaro played the first 27 games of his MLB career for Valentine’s 2002 Mets, among them one notable three-inning stint as a left fielder. (He’s made 18 appearances in the outfield in his career.) As the story goes:

Scutaro, recalled when Edgardo Alfonzo was placed on the disabled list Friday with a strained oblique muscle, played only five games in left field at Class AAA Norfolk, but Manager Bobby Valentine’s reports told him Scutaro was competent to play there in a major league game. So when Valentine used Scutaro to bat for Jeromy Burnitz in the fifth inning — Scutaro looked at strike three — he intended to put him in left.

. . .

In the sixth, Cardinals catcher Eli Marrero reached for a pitch by Reed, the Mets’ second reliever in today’s game, and lofted a fly ball to deep left field. Scutaro broke left, then right, and finally watched the ball land over his head for a leadoff double. “I didn’t have any reason to think he couldn’t play out there,” Valentine said.

The 2002 Mets, everybody. I’m sure Marco’s memories are fond ones.

Dec. 28, 2001: Exactly zero percent of the people pictured look upon this fondly. Though Mo did make a lot of money that day. (AP)

While preparing my thoughts on Bobby Valentine for a column, I dug into the New York Times archives to read up on Valentine’s incendiary 2002 exit from the New York Mets — until Thursday, his last job in the major leagues. There’s far more to discuss about it than I care to get into here, but I did stumble across one clip that I had to share.

OK, a little more than one clip. Everyone always talks about how Valentine and GM Steve Phillips — the bookends on that Mo Vaughn sandwich up there — clashed repeatedly throughout 2002, with Valentine only cementing his reputation as needing to be the smartest person in the room.

The Mets struggled mightily in 2001, coming off their NL pennant win in 2000, and Phillips sought to change that. Here is a sampling of the free agents he brought in for the 2002 season, with an abbreviated statline for each: Mo Vaughn (.259/.349/.456), Roberto Alomar (.266/.331/.376), Jeromy Burnitz (.215/.311/.365), Roger Cedeno (.260/.318/.346), Pedro Astacio (4.79 ERA, 32 HRs allowed in 190+ innings), Shawn Estes (4.55 ERA in 130+ IP) and John Valentin (Played five positions in 114 games before dying of dysentery in September.).

It’s a wonder Valentine didn’t take to talking to Phillips in a baby voice. My mother might stumble across a better free-agent haul than that.

On March 27, 2002, the Times led a Mets notebook with the following:

Mo Vaughn has played with broken bones, returned from knee surgery in three weeks and played half a season with what turned out to be a torn biceps tendon in his left arm. That is why he is insulted when his ability to lead is questioned. After hearing more complaints from his previous team, the Angels, about his alleged bad attitude in Anaheim, Vaughn was livid.

Using a stream of expletives and disparaging remarks, Vaughn was quoted in Monday’s New York Post questioning the right of Angels closer Troy Percival to criticize his leadership. Vaughn noted that Percival had never played on a team that made the playoffs.

This link appears to flesh out some of the details, namely that Percival said “We may miss Mo’s bat, but we won’t miss his leadership. Darin Erstad is our leader.” A sampling of Vaughn’s rebuttal:

“Let me say this: Who the (expletive) is Troy Percival? What has he done in this game? Has he led his team to a pennant? Has he ever (expletive) pitched in a big game that meant something? This guy talks so much (expletive), and he hasn’t even done (expletive).

“He has the right to evaluate and analyze people, but what the hell has he done to deserve that right? He hasn’t done (expletive) to lead them anywhere. I got hardware, I got playoff appearances, I got an MVP. I’ve been to the playoffs twice. What the hell has he done? Who the hell is he?

“I tried to be cool here. I tried to be nice of this whole situation concerning the Angels all the way around. Ain’t none of them done a damn thing in this damn game, bottom line. They ain’t got no flags hanging at friggin’ Edison Field, so the hell with them.”

Percival proceeded to save 40 games in the 2002 regular season with a 1.92 ERA, then saved seven more in the postseason as the Angels won their first (and to date only) World Series.

Vaughn — who never played in a World Series, who was a career .226 hitter in the playoffs, whose 1995 MVP probably should have gone to Albert Belle and who was coming off missing the entire 2001 season to injury — batted .249/.346/.438 in 166 games with the Mets in 2002-03. A knee injury not helped by his being nearly 270 pounds at the time then ended his career.

As knockouts go, that’s about as decisive as you’re going to get.

Oct. 2, 2010 - Playing out the string against the Yankees. (Julie Couture photo)

In the pantheon of Heidi Watney photos available on the Internet, this has to be one of the worst. And yet, it is the one I think of as she departs for her native California, her inevitable and long-discussed departure somehow making the Red Sox fallout hurt all over again.

Last summer, Julie won an incredible package in a charity auction: two field-box seats for a Red Sox-Yankees game during the final series of the regular season, limo transportation to and from the game, and $200. She was downright giddy. Of course, the Red Sox spent the last three months of the season treading water, rendering the game largely meaningless. Then, the day of said game, it poured.

Julie and her running buddy Dione ended up taking the limo up to the city anyway. Based on photos, it looks like they went to dinner. Also, this happened:

Julie, to the unaware, is one of the few people in the Commonwealth whiter than me.

The game got rescheduled as the back end of a double-header the next night, with Boston’s starting lineup literally featuring all of the following players: Eric Patterson, Felipe Lopez, Lars Anderson, Daniel Nava, Yamaico Navarro and Kevin Cash. Still, she had sweet seats right behind the Yankee dugout, and the lack of a crowd meant she could move around.

About midway through the game, Julie decided to start snapping photos of Watney, who was stationed in the nearby camera well. (I may have expressed some fondness for Heidi through the years that led to this photography attempt, but that’s neither here nor there.) There’s three photos from the exercise: one’s the top half of Watney’s head staring out at the field, the second is Watney starting to turn toward Julie and the third is the above.

“She caught me,” Julie said later. She’d been trying to surreptitiously snap some shots, only to have Heidi notice and basically say, “well, if you’re going to take my picture on this crappy night, the least I can do is smile for it.”

I really shouldn’t be as impressed with this as I am, given Watney’s history as a beauty queen. And yet, I am. It’s just such a nice little gesture that I have no doubt she did hundreds of times in her stretch with NESN, and fits completely with everything I ever witnessed. For the first three of Watney’s four years covering the Red Sox, I was still full-time on the beat for the S-T. (“Full-time” being a very relative term.) At no point did I ever see her be anything but genuinely gracious and approachable and nice. To everybody.

Given how easy (and consequence free) it would have been to not be, that says something pretty good about her.

For what it’s worth, Heidi and I may have spoken twice during those four years, and it was in the most basic of forms. This should surprise no one who knows me, since I’m frequently unable to handle even basic social situations with people I know, never mind ones with sharp-dressed beauty queens whom I may have referred to as “the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in person.” Watney responded to a tweet I wrote once and I almost blacked out.

Perhaps this simply amazes me because I’m not pretty people, meaning I look upon their world with slack-jawed amazement (when the brightness doesn’t force me to avert my eyes). But I can’t even count the number of times I recall people shouting stuff at her of various taste levels, or taking her picture from afar, or taking a dozen pictures of her while she waited outside the clubhouse trying to work. It made me uncomfortable, and I’m sure I was only seeing a sliver of the worst of it.

To say nothing about her being romantically linked with basically every member of the organization at one time or another. (Something Watney probably didn’t help when she appeared about town with utility man Nick Green a couple years back, and something — if the most persistent rumor is true — that punches a bit of a hole in my thesis about her being a thoroughly decent person.) I’m sure, just that I didn’t see the worst, that she didn’t handle it all with aplomb.

But she did more than a lot of people probably deserved. And you know, she did make an effort to do her job well, though that requires a qualification. This past season, you could basically be guaranteed that almost every Red Sox broadcast would feature Heidi Watney talking to the opposing team’s pitching coach and/or manager, Heidi Watney finishing every one of her reports by kicking it back up to the booth with a flat “Don,” and Heidi Watney eating some sort of ridiculous ballpark concession. (OK, the last was more of a once-per-series thing.) She was not, on the whole, going to tell a reasonably informed New England baseball fan something they didn’t know.

Just bear in mind we’re talking about someone who, in her first days on the job, asked Terry Francona about “double balls” when she was trying to ask about “double-play balls.” Her job was to not ruin and occasionally enhance the broadcast. Unless you’re a real stick in the mud, we can agree she absolutely did that, and she heads to the Lakers sidelines or whatever she’ll be doing in L.A. infinitely more qualified than she was when she got here.

Life will certainly go on without her for the same reason that NESN continues to exist at all: They have the Red Sox and Bruins games. No matter who they staff or what strange coverage decisions they make or what awful show they put on to fill time, if you want to watch the games, they’re the only place to turn. The Internet is already rife with articles pondering possible replacements, if only because it’s a good excuse to post cheesecake shots of other beauty queens*. I would do that if I was any good at the Internet.

But since I’m not, I’m simply close with this: Heidi, fare thee well. You were overwhelmingly decent in everything that entails, and you made my wife smile. I could not reasonably ask for anything more.

* — The past couple days, I’ve started to become more aware of the fact that TV stations sure do hire an awful lot of beauty pageant girls for on-air jobs. Not that I’ve ever not known, it’s just one of those things that’s come up a couple times of late, most recently in the case of Jackie Bruno. She’s working at the NBC affiliate that used to employ the Mrs., and I ended up on her Twitter page (which includes a rundown of her pageant history) after the beloved Falcons tweeted about Bruno covering one of their games.

I’ve seen Jackie anchor the news a handful of times when I’ve been home, and could never place why she looked familiar. Well, that triggered it … she’s a SouthCoaster and a BU alum, and the S-T’s full-court press coverage of her through the years led to a blog post on Aug. 12, 2003. (It’s about three-quarters of the way down the page. Along the way, you’ll pass the Kelly Osbourne photo and caption that I think of absolutely any time I see Kelly Osbourne.)

If I only could get this place back to the magic of something like semi-live blogging the Miss Teen USA pageant.

Back in the old days, I would often break out posts for BU hockey coverage, coming as close to writing professionally about the beloved Terriers as I really have much care to do. (I’d overcome my bias issues, but it’s much more fun not to.)

I was not at Sunday’s game*, which is a tragedy. So, you just get this.

Wade Megan, pretzel goalie. Pretzel goalie, Wade Megan. (Boston Herald photo)

That’s still pretty damn good though. The first time BU has shut out BC since March 1, 1983. (Or, more than six years before goaltender Kieran Millan was born. Christ, his parents might not even have met by then.) I went and dug up the game notes upon reading that because it seemed impossible, but sure enough.

* — By the time I got to work and had a chance to check on the score, it was 4-0 good guys. That was the same score it was in the only time I’ve ever actually seen a game at BC’s Conte Forum/Kelley Rink: Jan. 8, 2000. Yeah, it didn’t end 4-0 good guys.

Sadly, that game predates the blog**, so I didn’t accurately capture the old man BC fan who started screaming “YEEEEAAAHHHH! YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH! YEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!” like an unhinged lunatic at the small group of us after the Eagles tied it with half a minute to go. My instincts were to hide. One of my pal’s instincts were to fight him. Neither happened, which seems the best possible outcome.

** – I did find a post from 2001 making reference to said game, but I threw around “we” several times in reference to the Terriers. I suppose it’s sort of OK given I was actually attending the school at the time, but best leave it buried given my strong feelings on the matter.

“God blessed me with my right arm. That’s all you got.”
— Jonathan Papelbon, during the 2007 World Series

Oct. 10, 2008: Cover and story. I don't need much excuse to post this, though it's now reminding me it finished second to a far worst cover in that year's NEAPNEA design contest.

Yeah, you could say that.

A couple nights after he said that, the Red Sox won their second World Series in four years. The team had a core of guys who, thanks to their youth, were all making well under $1 million for the year: Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, Jon Lester and Papelbon.

That was as good as it got for them. Great teams, great players and they never got back.

The first of those five just left town, given the largest contract ever to a relief pitcher. Philadelphia, built for several years on the concept of winning now at the expense of worrying about later later, is going to get a damn good closer for at least the next two years, if not longer.

Whether the Red Sox should have kept him isn’t really my point: they didn’t have a chance once he hit free agency, and they were going to have a hell of a time keeping him from free agency even if they went whole hog into it. My point is the first of those five core guys is gone.

Winning’s nice. Winning with players you draft and develop, watching them become superstars every day, is a little nicer.

Even knowing it was coming for years, the reality’s still a little surreal.