That wasn’t always pretty, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.
Yeah, I remember that season-opening sweep by the Orioles at Fenway. A series that, on the heels of the miserable 2020 ‘rona season, sent the majority of Red Sox Nation into a panic. Surely the infamous Mookie Betts trade had sent the franchise into a tailspin from which it would take a full-blown rebuild to recover.
Well, that didn’t happen. If you had told me after the Orioles sweep that this team would make it to Game 6 of the ALCS, I would have suggested that you seek therapy. Here we are, after a vastly successful season with that stunningly optimistic outcome now a reality, and it feels like this team could have done more. This should be one of those magical, 2013-esque worst-to-first title runs. Watching the stupid cheating Astros celebrate in front of a raucous crowd in Houston and a baseball world that seemingly forgot all about the scandal, it didn’t feel right; it didn’t feel like what was supposed to happen. We HAD this series. We shellacked the Astros for consecutive blowout wins, and their pitching staff was supposed to be in shambles. But baseball is weird and dumb and cruel, and here we are lamenting the star-studded Red Sox lineup’s inability to hit its way out of a paper bag.
Really, it was a microcosm of the season. The only thing consistent about this team is that it would look like the best team in baseball for some stretches and quite literally the worst team in baseball for others. That season-opening disaster wasn’t even the most painful series loss this year to the bottom-of-the-barrel Orioles, with their absolutely electric pitching staff of Bruce Zimmermann, Zac Lowther, and Alexander Wells. When the Sox were getting Pizza Hut pizz-owned by the pitiful O’s right before the final weekend of the season, it felt like 2011 all over again. It felt like this team didn’t deserve to make the playoffs. But they got hot again, and oh boy, did they prove that feeling wrong. I am so damn proud of this team. A team that seemed to lose badly in most games I had the chance to watch before October, but luckily was able to perform when I wasn’t around to jinx them.
Raffy Devers and Xander Bogaerts are absolute goddamn studs, the heart and soul of this squad. Nathan Eovaldi is a fucking bulldog on the mound with balls of steel, and the way he K’d the side to escape that fourth-inning jam in Game 6 was badass. J.D. Martinez is the platonic ideal of a “professional hitter,” despite his bizarre injury tripping over second base. I could keep going on about these guys, even the relative weirdos like Christian Arroyo, Travis Shaw, Danny Santana (who somehow got a pinch-hit at-bat in Game 6), and Hirokazu Sawamura. It seems like a supremely likeable group of guys, more so than the Astros, widely considered the most punchable team in baseball. This doesn’t feel right, but this season was a hell of a ride, and you bet your ass we’ll be back. I’m fully on the Braves bandwagon now. And never forget the true stars of the 2021 Red Sox: Jonathan Arauz, Yairo Munoz, Michael Chavis, Taylor Motter, Jack Lopez, and Phillips Valdez. [Update: Hell yes, the Braves were my second choice to win it all! Thank god it wasn’t the Astros or Dodgers.]