I subscribe to the Glob's email newsletter 108 Stitches that highlights each day's Sox coverage. Today's newsletter opens like this:
If you celebrated Mother’s Day by taking mom to Fenway Park to see the Red Sox play the Washington Nationals, you owe her another gift. Or an apology.
On a cold and windy day, the Sox managed only one hit in 13 at-bats with runners in scoring position but managed to beat the Nationals, 3-2, in a game lacking any trace of elegance.
Washington aided the cause of the home team by running into five outs on the bases, the last one to end the game when Jacob Young was thrown out by Connor Wong trying to steal second.
That is the lead to the report on yesterday's game. That just seems so sour and bitter and weird.
That should be the lead to a game where the Sox lose like 6-0 and make a couple errors. But they won a close game! It was the other team being dumb and bad for once and the Red Sox taking advantage of it.
That lead (I don't care that reporters tell everyone it should be spelled "lede" that is dumb and I am not doing it) was so incongruous that this time I had to click on the article to see what was up with the rest of it. (I regret doing that and giving Abraham what he wants but this is the first click I've given him in a long time, and I won't be doing it again.)
Next paragraph:
To further torture the crowd of 29,250, Nationals manager Dave Martinez challenged the call on a play that wasn’t really that close.
As the Sox players wandered around the field and others spilled out of the dugout, the call was upheld and finally everyone could go home.
“An ugly one, but I’ll take it,” Sox manager Alex Cora said.
Torture? It was annoying to have to wait through the challenge but those are the rules (and any team would challenge the last play because why not? And it wasn't our team wasting people's time like that.) "Finally everyone could go home."
And then the last play:
Wong bounced the throw but Ceddanne Rafaela was able to get the tag down.
Sounds like a bad throw, but then doesn't that mean it was a good play by Rafaela to get the tag down? No, he "was able" to do it. That's all.
Actually Jansen is terrible at holding runners and the pinch runner got a great jump and Wong had to pop up incredibly quickly and absolutely gun the ball down there to have any chance, and Rafaela had to make a really good catch on the bounce and really quickly slap the tag down to get the runner out. By the way this rookie Rafaela played both CF and SS in this game and is really exciting to watch, and the Red Sox ended the game with a great, exciting defensive play. But the more important thing is that finally everyone could go home, away from the ballgame that was so tortuous that the fans deserve apologies for having to endure it.
The team actually has a wining record despite tons of serious injuries and are doing better than most expected, so it's not like this game was a lone bright spot in a sea of losing. The game was close and had loads of weird plays, and the Red Sox opened and closed the game by nailing base-stealers (which may have never happened before in the history of baseball?) The game ended with Wong gunning down a pinch runner, the potential tying run, trying to steal. Wong actually gunned down 3 runners trying to advance and handled a weird rundown perfectly. You might think that would be noteworthy, but it's not because that just means the other team is dumb (which they were, Robles especially) so there should be no enjoyment of it. Instead you should apologize for taking someone to this game. Because it lacked any trace of "elegance" and the other team made some stupid plays that we capitalized on. The bad hitting with RISP is more notable than the good defense or the pitching that only allowed 2 runs, which only scored because Rafaela just missed robbing a HR with a tremendous effort.
Sure the Nats were in pure Natstown mode, but why is that so bad that you should apologize to your mother for taking her to the game? Personally I find it fun when the other team makes stupid mistakes and we take advantage of them and win. And yesterday wasn't THAT cold and windy, especially compared to a lot of the April games, and it was pretty sunny out. It's New England in May, what do you expect? Most games this year have been played in worse conditions.
More importantly, our promising young pitcher Bello was back, he pitched well, it was close, we won, lots of wacky stuff happened (like when Rafaela came so close to making the catch of the year and flew over the fence into the bullpen)-- it actually seems like one of the best games of the year to have been at Fenway for so far.
I usually never click on Abraham's stuff because he strikes me as an obnoxious spewer of performative grievance, and reading that in 108 Stitches made me very glad that I don't read him. So it's not surprising that his take on yesterday's weird, close and pretty fun game was so bitter.
But it did make me wonder who actually enjoys reading something like that? I get why this guy writes something like that (to follow in the longstanding Fellowship of the Miserable tradition of being whiny and negative and faux angry to get attention for himself) but why would anyone want to read it? Do people enjoy reading baseball writers who go on and on about how hard and unpleasant it is for them to have cover baseball games and how the games stink, and anyone dumb enough to go to a ballgame that the Sox win by 1 run deserves an apology?
I guess if you are angry about the Red Sox, it confirms your anger so maybe you enjoy reading it. But does it matter that his spin was like not at all accurate? That's the part I don't get. I get being upset with the offseason, and definitely get that when the team is bad the truth should be told. But when the game being written about is actually not bad, and kind of fun and interesting, shouldn't that truth be told as well? Probably just me, but I prefer reporting that's based on reality, rather than constant pushing of a bitter narrative no matter what actually happens.
At least I learned something from this-- that Abraham is even worse than I remembered, and to make sure to never give him a click again.
