Whose Departure From the Sox Devastated You Most?

PedroisGod

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Aug 30, 2002
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The Hammer, Canada
Info that BOS did not have when making that decision.
That's true. But if you're evaluating whether it was the right decision to let him leave, and you're using a SSS like starts against one particular team, I think it's fair to evaluate what he did against that team afterwards, no?

And ERAs of 3.46 and 3.80 against the best offense in the league in an era of heightened offense don't really seem too bad to me.
 

Rough Carrigan

reasons within Reason
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No arguing with religion. :)
You're gonna get some decline no matter what. The frequency of seeing a guy is a huge factor in hitting him better. It's why Pedro absolutely destroyed AL west teams. It's why the Sox finally had some success against Rivera. No matter how great you are if you face a really good hitting team a lot of times they will eventually do better against you.l
 

SmokeyJoeWould

New Member
Dec 30, 2019
2
1. Fisk - Mainly because he was so good for so long after leaving, and he didn't want to leave.
2. Lynn - My first favorite player.
3. Vaughn - I still remember telling a Yankee fan friend in 1996: "Know what MVP stands for? Mo Vaughn, period."
4. Anyone who ended up playing in pinstripes.
 

Jim Ed Rice in HOF

Red-headed Skrub child
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Jul 21, 2005
8,252
Seacoast NH
This

and this.

I was a 11/12 when both of these happened and the "business of baseball" hadn't hardened me yet. For a few years my mother and my friend's mother used to take us to opening day and as luck would have it one of those years the scheduling gods were nice enough to have a Sox/Sox matchup to welcome back Fisk who then proceeded to hit a HR as part of a White Sox win.
Nice of MLB network to show this game. Fisk about to come up and homer in the 8th.
 

Savin Hillbilly

loves the secret sauce
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Jul 10, 2007
18,783
The wrong side of the bridge....
Mookie, hands down. Pedro is my all-time favorite athlete and nobody else is close, so seeing him go was rough, but he was also at the tail end of his marvelous career.
It occurs to me, thinking about this in light of the little Pedro sploogefest in the other thread, that it wasn't really Pedro's departure in itself that devastated me. It was more the whole slow-motion decline in his gloriousness and his importance to the team. He was never really the same after the 2001 injury, but he was still damn good for a couple of years. But by 2004, he was less than he had been, and got overshadowed by Curt Schilling, which is like an offense against the dignity of the gods or something. That championship should have been his crowning moment, and instead he was kind of an afterthought, a supporting player. That, on top of the humiliation of the way he was misused by Grady in the denouement of 2003, and just the whole way he gradually fell from Olympus to just an ordinary ace, and then to a pretty good #2, and then he left, and then he just kept declining. It wasn't a catastrophe, it was just a slow sad ride into the middle distance. It kind of reminds me of Frodo at the end of Lord of the Rings -- the hero who's too wounded to enjoy the triumph, and kind of fades into the background while his lesser companions get the glory.
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Oct 1, 2015
24,375
It occurs to me, thinking about this in light of the little Pedro sploogefest in the other thread, that it wasn't really Pedro's departure in itself that devastated me. It was more the whole slow-motion decline in his gloriousness and his importance to the team. He was never really the same after the 2001 injury, but he was still damn good for a couple of years. But by 2004, he was less than he had been, and got overshadowed by Curt Schilling, which is like an offense against the dignity of the gods or something. That championship should have been his crowning moment, and instead he was kind of an afterthought, a supporting player. That, on top of the humiliation of the way he was misused by Grady in the denouement of 2003, and just the whole way he gradually fell from Olympus to just an ordinary ace, and then to a pretty good #2, and then he left, and then he just kept declining. It wasn't a catastrophe, it was just a slow sad ride into the middle distance. It kind of reminds me of Frodo at the end of Lord of the Rings -- the hero who's too wounded to enjoy the triumph, and kind of fades into the background while his lesser companions get the glory.
I hear you. I'm just really glad Pedro had his masterpiece in game 3 of the World Series.

7.0 ip, 3 h, 0 r, 0 er, 2 bb, 6 k, in a 4-1 win that slammed the door on the Cardinals instead of letting them back into the series.
 

runnels3

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SoSH Member
And, if it counts, no one leaving has bothered me in a long time more than Orsillo.
[/QUOTE]

It definitely counts. I'd say the departure of Ned Martin & Jim Woods in 1978 upset me more than any player leaving. It was so final. In one fell swoop our connection to daily baseball on the radio with these genuine, likable baseball guys was axed without a reasonable explanation. Listening to the Sox on the radio has never been the same.
 

snowmanny

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Dec 8, 2005
15,667
I hear you. I'm just really glad Pedro had his masterpiece in game 3 of the World Series.

7.0 ip, 3 h, 0 r, 0 er, 2 bb, 6 k, in a 4-1 win that slammed the door on the Cardinals instead of letting them back into the series.
Defense from Manny and Papi deserve some of the credit for that linescore. He had a similar performance in the 2009 NLDS, his next post-season appearance.
 

daltonsoxfan

New Member
Jul 31, 2006
9
Francona and Epstein - and I'm not sure which order I would put them in. While it's true there were championships in '13 and '18 I can't help but feel our entire roster would have been in much better shape from '12 thru '19 with those two in key positions. The one I was most glad to see leave was Lucchino with Nomar a close second. The way Nomar was going he would have poisoned the entire team.
 

Humphrey

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Aug 3, 2010
3,163
And, if it counts, no one leaving has bothered me in a long time more than Orsillo.
It definitely counts. I'd say the departure of Ned Martin & Jim Woods in 1978 upset me more than any player leaving. It was so final. In one fell swoop our connection to daily baseball on the radio with these genuine, likable baseball guys was axed without a reasonable explanation. Listening to the Sox on the radio has never been the same.
[/QUOTE]

Martin had what I would say was the perfect exit. He (and probably Woods too) handled it very professionally, didn't say much, if anything about it being the end.

Then, in the playoff game against the Yanks, when Yaz came up, he said (SIC) "and stepping to the plate is the man who in my 23 years (or whatever it was) has come to symbolize baseball in Boston, Carl Yastrzemski...". Yaz then hit a homer, might have even been the first pitch. Ned should have let Possum do the rest of the game after that.
 

Martin and Woods

New Member
Dec 8, 2017
81
And, if it counts, no one leaving has bothered me in a long time more than Orsillo.
It definitely counts. I'd say the departure of Ned Martin & Jim Woods in 1978 upset me more than any player leaving. It was so final. In one fell swoop our connection to daily baseball on the radio with these genuine, likable baseball guys was axed without a reasonable explanation. Listening to the Sox on the radio has never been the same.
[/QUOTE]

Hear, hear!