My Favorite Red Sox Players 15-11

 

15. Bill Mueller

It’s difficult to say that anyone on the 2004 Boston Red Sox is underrated—hell, little used reliever Curtis Leskanic receives hosannas when he comes back to town. This is all deserved, that team fucking rules.

But one of the more under appreciated, anonymous players was third baseman Bill Mueller. Yes, everyone knows about the glorious hit through the box against Mariano Rivera driving in Dave Roberts in the ninth inning of Game Four of the ALCS. That’s the hit that exposed a chink in the armor of the great beast. That's the hit that showed the Sox that the Russian can bleed. That’s the hit that began the greatest comeback in all of sports history.

But while absolutely amazing, that hit shouldn't have been a surprise. Mueller was a professional hitter. All he did was hit He hit at home. He hit on the road. Day games, he hit. Night games too. He pounded out hits against the American League. When it was time for interleague games, he hammered National League pitching. He hit in Spring Training, during the regular season and the post season.

During the ARod glove to the face game, who won that game with a ninth inning ding dong johnson off Rivera? Bill fucking Mueller did, that’s who.

Mueller came to the Sox in the 2002-03 offseason with David Ortiz, Kevin Millar and Jeremy Giambi. The Sox already had the immortal Shea Hillenbrand at third. Epstein wanted to improve production at first, third and DH. He figured that three of those five guys would solve those problems.

And he was right.

The first year Mueller was in Boston, the switch hitter lead the league in batting average. The second year he became the first hitter ever to hit two grand slams from each side of the plate in one game.

On a team full of extra large personalities, Mueller went about his work and perfected his craft. Hit after hit, game after game, season after season. He was a metronome. Not only could he hit for average and power but he was a damn fine third baseman. Did Mueller ever make an error? I’m sure he did. Do I remember any? No I don’t.

You may have heard of a comedian’s comedian or a writer’s writer, Bill Mueller was a ball player’s ball player. Everything he did was just right.

I loved watching him play.

14. Jon Lester

Lester is the best left handed that the Sox drafted and developed since Bruce Hurst and is probably the overall best pitcher to come out of their system since Roger Clemens.

It always sucks when the Sox (or any pro team) low balls a player, but it especially sucked with Lester. It was just weird for them to do that. He’s a home grown player that was beloved by the fans. Due to his battle with lymphoma, he was a tireless worker for the Jimmy Fund. Both his illness and charity work have increased his standing with the Boston fans and the Sox were like, “nah, we’ll move on”.

I get that pro sports is a business but I think that there are players you make an exception for. Jon Lester was one of those guys.

Lester came up in 2005 and had a pretty good year, he was 7-2 with a high ERA but there was enough there to think that he’d be a player. His sophomore season was interrupted when he was diagnosed with lymphoma.

After treatments he came back in the middle of 2007 season and provided a shot in the arm for the Sox pitching staff. He started—and won—Game 4 of the World Series, which happened to be the day my eldest daughter was born. It was a remarkable comeback and Lester kept rolling.

2008 saw him throw a no-hitter, and after two very solid seasons, he was named an All-Star in 2010. 2011 was a mixed bag for both the Sox and Lester as the team gagged a big lead and Lester was implicated in the “chicken and beer” fiasco that vilified 3/5s of the starting pitching staff.

The other two “culprits” Josh Beckett and John Lackey got far more scrutiny than Lester did but he got a bit. This was sort of a strange era for Lester. He was born and lived most of his life in Washington state but for some reason he began speaking with a Texas accent around this time. It was kinda like when Madonna married Guy Ritchie and she thought she was English. I don’t know whether it was because he wanted to impress the Texas born Beckett but it was annoying. I think he dropped it after Beckett was sent to LA as part of the Punto trade.

Dumb voice choices aside, in 2013 he was part of another World Series championship and the following year he was sent to the Oakland Athletics when he couldn’t come to terms with Boston on a contract extension.

Seeing Lester as an A was just strange, seeing him as a Cub wasn’t as strange but it didn’t look right either. Seeing him as a National or a Cardinal was not as jarring because I don’t recall these stops very much.

The Red Sox are like any other franchise, they make good moves and bad ones. Not signing Jon Lester was a particularly dumb one that took the Sox a few years to repair. There’s a cliche that says, “if the front office listens to the fans, they’ll soon be sitting with the fans” and that’s probably correct more times than it’s not.

This time, it wasn’t.

13. Dustin Pedroia

Baseball is the most democratic (small d) of all sports. What I mean by this is that it doesn’t matter how big you are, how fast you are, how tall you are; if you have great hand-eye coordination you will play. Chances are, you'll play well.

Dustin Pedroia is about a foot shorter than current star Aaron Judge. Despite their height differences both are former MVPs and both are Hall of Fame candidates. I think that many fans gravitate towards the Pedroia types because they see themselves in him.

It’s hard to see yourself as a football player, you have to be the size of a fridge and run faster than a Ferrari. Basketball? Only if you’re freakishly tall. Hockey player. Do you have world class hand-eye coordination? Cool. Can you do it on a millimeter thick piece of metal on ice?

Even someone like Judge is tough to relate to because he’s incredibly athletic for his height. But Pedroia? He’s 5’7”, I’m taller than 5’7”. Not only that but Pedroia played the game the way we think we’d play: all-out hustle, dirty uniform, getting your nose in everything.

Pedroia was more than that, of course. He could flat out rake and he was nails at second base. A leader on the team, he was acerbic and funny and he seemed like a genuinely cool guy. Everyone loved him from Terry Francona to David Ortiz to Alex Cora. The only person who didn’t seem to love him was Bobby Valentine, who was about as popular as rug burn in Boston.

He won an MVP award, Rookie of the Year, was a multiple All-Star and was part of three World Championship teams. So Pedroia was a mirage, right? Due to his height you may think you’re as good as him but you’re not. You’re nowhere near his level.

That’s okay. The world has use for mirages, it does the opposite of grounding us, it gives us hope. Without ballplayers like Dustin Pedroia, how are we to dream that we can do anything? Pedroia is essential to the MLB fan experience.

12. Jim Rice

Whenever you started following sports, you always had a first favorite player. Someone who was larger than life and could do no wrong. For me, that was Jim Rice. He was the first player that I can remember seeing on TV. In my mind’s eye, I can picture him at bat: 12 feet tall, weighing about 500 pounds gripping his bat like a toothpick just daring a pitcher to make a mistake.

By the time I started following the Sox, he was settling into a part of his career when the Fenway Faithful sorta took him for granted. This is an era that happens with all Boston greats where if they don’t deliver every. Single. Time. They’re overpaid bums. People used to joke that Rice’s license plate was 6-4-3, for his seeming propensity to bounce into double-plays “when the team needed him the most”. Of course, that’s not true, Rice delivered more times than not.

In 1986 Rice had his last really great year, leading (with Roger Clemens) the Sox to the World Series against the Mets. I think the Sox won that year but I also passed out for two weeks after the top of the tenth of Game 6, so who knows?

Speaking of World Series, in late 1975 Rice broke a bone when he was hit with a pitch by Angels pitcher Vern Ruhle. Considering how close that Series was without the slugger, could history have been different if a healthy Rice was in the lineup?

From all accounts Rice was considered “the most feared slugger in the American League” and he rode that perception into the Hall of Fame on his last year on the ballot. Should Jim Rice be in Cooperstown? I don't know. If you’re a small hall person who didn’t grow up with him, no. But I’m a big hall guy whose first favorite player was Jim Rice, so I definitely think he deserves it.

Rice has settled into a role with the Sox where he shows up at Spring Training (gets yelled at by shithead front office types) and is on NESN during the regular season. For a guy who was notoriously prickly to the media, I’m glad that Rice never faded away.

To me he’s a great reminder of my childhood and why I loved baseball.

11. Ellis Burks

Like I’ve said a million times, I began seriously watching baseball in 1986 which, the way 99.8% of the season went, was a pretty awesome introduction to the sport.

Aside from one night in October, the one thing that sucked was that it impacted how I thought roster construction should be. That year the Sox’ philosophy was to get a bunch of big dudes and try to hit the ball out of the park. Speed was not part of the equation at all. It would taker an on-base machine like Wade Boggs three singles to score if he walked.

But pretty much everywhere aside from Boston, teams were promoting athletes—players who could hit and run as well as field. Eric Davis in Cincinnati. Rickey in New York. Darryl Strawberry also in New York. Kirby Puckett in Minnesota Jose Canseco in Oakland. Tim Raines in Montreal. And there was also a push towards dudes who could run and catch: Willie Wilson in Kansas City, practically everyone in St. Louis.

The point is, baseball was moving towards athletes. Boston was firm in not doing that. Over 30, old guys was what they were going to build around. Flipping from a Sox game to a Cardinals game was like going from Earth to Neptune.

When Ellis Burks was promoted from Pawtucket, Red Sox nation collective exclaimed, “finally, we have our athlete!” Burks showed up and he was fast, he had power, he could hit for average and he could field. He was a four-tool player (I don’t think his arm was that great) but it didn’t matter, we finally had our Willie Mays!

Burks had several solid seasons with Boston but the problem was, he was always getting hurt. That tends to happen when Mike Greenwell is playing on your right, but there were still plenty of non-Gator injuries.

I remember being bummed out when Burks was elected to the 1990 All-Star but he couldn’t play because he was hurt. I recall Burks jogging out to the first base line in Wrigley and thinking, “so close, man. This sucks for him.” After a few more injury plagued seasons, the Sox let him go. This is when Burks flipped the switch and became a star. First in Chicago, then Colorado, then San Francisco and Cleveland before coming back to Boston in 2004. Every stop aside from his last never ended in a Championship.

But, I’m not sure if you heard this before, the Boston Red Sox won it all in 2004. Did Ellis Burks play? Of course not. But the coolest thing was when the plane landed in Boston after their flight from home from St. Louis, who was the person walking out the door with the trophy? Burks.

Burks always represented the future. From the time he showed up at Fenway, Boston is taking part in the modern game! To his injuries, just wait until Burks comes back, then we’ll be clicking. Until he didn’t.

And ironically, that's when he had his most success, when he wasn't in Boston. However when he joined the team in 2004 it was a link to the past. Burks seemed to represent all of the players who were on those close-but-no-cigar teams, the teams that were out of it by Memorial Day, the teams that were good but never great.

Ellis was our avatar. I can’t prove this but for a lot of people my age, Ellis Burks was their favorite player because he was the future and at that time, we were too. Over his 17 seasons we grew, changed, had families, excelled, failed, reached some of our potential and fell short in other places. Just like Gen-X hero Burks. So when Ellis walked off that plane, brother that was all of us. That’s how we want to go out, a champion!

How can you not relate to that?

Daryl Irvine 1992 Fleer

Sometime in the last two or three months, I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

 

 

 

I don’t recall anything about Daryl Irvine’s days in Boston. According to the back of this card, Daryl was “one of the top closers in the minor leagues [and] will try to graduate to the big leagues in 1992.” He played three years in the Bigs (1990, 1991 and 1992) and was the exact opposite of what you want in a closer.

 

In 63.1 career innings, Irvine gave up 71 hits, 33 walks and only struck out 27 batters. Not surprisingly, his ERA was astronomical: 5.68; so not only did he put runners on base, but he let them score too. No matter how good he was in the minors—not good, actually he pretty much had the same kind of issues down there—he wasn’t going to close for anyone unless he missed some bats.

 

When I wrote about Dana Kiecker a few weeks back, we talked about that 1990 team and Irvine was a part of that team, he pitched in 11 games. But the other two years he pitched, the Red Sox weren’t great. They had their moments in 1991, but in 92 the Red Sox were so bad. Tom Brunansky led the team with 15 home runs. Bob Zupcic led the team in batting average: .276, over Wade Boggs who managed to hit .259!

 

The team finished with 73 wins, but if you look at their roster, they should have been able to put something together: Boggs, Mo Vaughn, JodyReed, Tony Pena, John Valentin, Ellis Burks, Mike Greenwell (the latter two were apparently hurt) plus Brunansky. Add in older dudes like Billy Hatcher, Jack Clark plus young kids like Phil Plantier, Scott Cooper and Tim Naehring and I mean, they could have been league average or better, if they hit.

 

The pitching was kind of a mess with solid years from RogerClemens and Frank Viola heading the rotation and Jeff Reardon closing, but everything after that was a complete disaster. Plus they had Butch Hobson managing, who was clearly way, way over his head.

 

Fun fact: 1992 was the only year since 1986 that I haven’t seen a game live at Fenway. I’m not sure why, but I decided to sit this year out; which is odd because I’ve seen some really shitty Red Sox teams play baseball. I wish that I saw the Sox play at least one game that season because it’s easier to say, “I’ve been to Fenway for 37 straight years” instead of “I’ve been to Fenway for 37 straight years, except for 1992. So I guess I’ve only been to the park for 30 straight years.”

 

That’s right, if I had a time machine, I wouldn’t go back and kill baby Hitler; I’d go back and watch the 1992 Red Sox in Fenway Park so that uninteresting personal anecdotes would be easier for me to relay.

 

Anyway Boston was apparently unimpressed with righthander and Irvine was sent to the Pittsburgh Pirates after the 1992 season. This was year one of the Pirates annual depths-of-the-division league tour that they’ve been perpetually on since Barry Bonds took his talents to San Francisco. Andy Van Slyke was still there, as was Jay Bell and Jeff King but other than future Red Sox Tim Wakefield and Stan Belinda, the staff was a complete and total disaster. Irvine should have been used to the chaos.

 

Ultimately it didn’t matter as Irvine was never able to put his chaotic team experience to good use as he never got a call up to Pittsburgh. Through the very perfunctory research that I’ve done, I can’t tell when he retired, but I bet it was pretty soon after that. According to Wikipedia, he lives in Harrisonburg, VA.

 

What does Daryl Irvine do all day? I’m not sure, but the way that his baseball career went, I’d be surprised if he thought about his days in the Major Leagues. I prefer to think about how he was drafted by the Red Sox three times over a couple of drafts—I guess the Sox liked him very much at one point. He probably thinks of his dominance in high school and college and how at one point everyone he knew wanted to be Daryl Irvine.

 

I think that’s what I’d think about as I’m relaxing on my porch in Harrisonburg, VA. I wouldn’t be thinking about the boring-ass drive from Pawtucket to Boston, sitting around in a cramped, sweaty bullpen waiting to get my brains beat in. That’s for god damn sure.

 

Maybe I’d show some neighborhood kids my baseball card if they asked, but I’d say, “that was a long time ago” and dramatically stare off into the distance. That wistful drama is almost cooler than having a lot of success at the Major League level. 

 

Almost. 

Carlos Quintana 1990 Fleer

 Sometime in October 2022 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

 

 

When I was younger, I was obsessed with rookies. The promise of a new ballplayer waiting in the minors to ply his trade in the Majors was like catnip to me for a number of reasons. For one thing, I was always one to appreciate the anticipation--the journey--rather than the destination. Christmas Eve was always more exciting to me because of the unknown; maybe Sana would bring me an AT-AT this year or a Millennium Falcon or a 2-XL robot. 

A lot of kids were excited about the minutes after ripping open their presents. The gifts still in the packages, framed by feet and feet of colorful wrapping paper. "What am I going to play with first," they thought. Me? I was always a bit depressed. "Is that it? Do I have to wait another 364 days to get what I really wanted?"

The anticipation was the killer, because reality never was as good as your imagination. 

In the 1980s, rookies were big business in the baseball card world and it was because of the promise of "What if". What if Mark McGwire hits 70 home runs in a year? What if Al Pedrique makes people forget Ozzie Smith? What if Ellis Burks is a perennial All-Star who leads the Red Sox to a World Series? 

And what if I have their rookie cards? Shit. I'll be rich. More than that. I'll be filthy rich. My college expenses? Taken care of--my kids' education too. New car? How about a sweet ride for every day. My parents? They could retire. These flimsy pieces of cardboard were the keys to my financial stability for the rest of my life. The key was that not only did I need to own and keep these cards mint, but the ballplayers on the front of them need to fulfill their promises. 

They'll get rich and so will I. 

So being very keen on rookies was both something that was encoded in my DNA (anticipation of greatness) and was important to my budding financial portfolio. The one thing that ratcheted this up even further was that there was probably 100 rookies making their debut every season. You could collect all of their cards, but you couldn't collect the multitudes of their cards necessary to make you wealthy. So you had to pick and choose. Who had the look of a guy that was going to not only be good, but capture the zeitgeist in a way like Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays did?

You find that guy and not only are you made in the shade, but you can tell everyone how you picked him. You saw the thing that made him special. You're the smartest one in the baseball card shop. It's an ego stroke. 

With that preamble, today's card: Carlos Quintana, I was never a fan of. I can't tell you why, because I was immediately invested in every Red Sox rookie but from the time he was called up to Boston until the day he left Fenway five seasons, I wanted him gone. I don't know whether it was because he didn't have the makeup of what I thought a first baseman or right fielder (his two primary positions) should have: namely power.

For his career Quintana slashed .276/.350/.362 and hit 19 home runs. Total. He played 149 games in back-to-back seasons (1990 and 1991) but I couldn't tell you a single big moment that he came through in. He was just there. There was nothing exciting about him. He hit close to .300 those years, but his power was low (11 homers was his career high in 1991) and he was particularly defensively gifted either. 

At the time I just wanted my stars to be bigger than life: Rickey Henderson, Bo Jackson, Jose Canseco. Dudes who were fast and knocked the ball into next week. Quintana was nothing like that. He'd hit singles and play station-to-station baseball. He was an uninteresting player on a good, but ultimately uninteresting team. 

Watching him every night was anger-inducing. Why does Oakland have all the good rookies? Pittsburgh too. And Cincinnati. And Chicago! They have two teams with two awesome young players (Mark Grace and Frank Thomas). Boston's best rookie is Carlos Quintana. Gross. 

In February of 1992 the most interesting--and worst--thing happened to Quintana. He was in his home country of Venezuela playing winter ball. He had to drive both of his brothers to the hospital, they were both shot. As he was speeding to the hospital, he got into a pretty big car accident and broke his left arm and big toe, while his wife broke both of her legs. He was out for the entire 1992 season.

It was a tragedy that I don't remember anyone ever getting to the bottom of. I think that reporters asked about it, the Red Sox made some statements and then it was dropped. I don't want to say that's how boring Carlos Quintana was but if that happened to Wade Boggs or Roger Clemens or Mike Greenwell, I think people would still be talking about it. 

That injury opened the door for a player who was already pushing Quintana, Mo Vaughn. Vaughn was the rookie that everyone wanted to play. He was loud, he was a big dude, he could hit for power and average, he had presence. I thought that he was the Red Sox version of Frank Thomas. And now he was getting his shot! This was the anticipation that I was talking about!

Handed the first base job, Mo didn't have a great year in 1992 and when I read the reports Quintana was working his way back, I was nervous. Was this going to be like the Christmas days of the past? Not really. Quintana came back and played the 1993season  and he was clearly still hurt. The Sox kept big Mo at first and bounced Q around from first (to give Mo a break) to the outfield, but he wasn't the same player. They released him after the 1993 season and he never played in the Majors again. 

Mo turned into an All-Star, won the MVP in 1995 and had some truly great seasons for the Sox before departing to the Angels for big money. That wasn't his best decision as he was hurt, fat and ineffective for California before getting traded to the Mets and finishing his career. 

At the end of the day, no one really got rich off of baseball cards. I paid my college loans every month, I wasn't able to allow my parents to retire early and my wife and each have a car (not seven). But that anticipation is what keeps you going. You just never fucking know. 

Mike Greenwell 1991 Topps

On May 18, 2016, I got the above card in my mailbox and wrote the following on Facebook later that day:

“The game is afoot! Look who I found in my mailbox today. I hope I get a Phil Plantier tomorrow.”

Yeah. It’s not Shakespeare, I know. I was still trying to find my footing with this whole Baseball Card Bandit (BCB) thing and wasn’t sure exactly where this thing was going*.

* To be honest, I still don’t know. At Aly’s 40^th birthday party dinner on Saturday, someone asked me if I knew who the BCB is, I said that I did and told them a name. The entire room stopped, everyone looked at me and shook their head and told me I was one thousand percent wrong. So I’m not sure whether they were all screwing with me by trying to throw me off the scent or whether they were being truthful.

It reminds me of the Epimenides Paradox. From 19^th Century English academic Thomas Fowler via 21^st Century academic Wikipedia: “Epimenides the Cretan says, 'that all the Cretans are liars,' but Epimenides is himself a Cretan; therefore he is himself a liar. But if he be a liar, what he says is untrue, and consequently the Cretans are veracious; but Epimenides is a Cretan, and therefore what he says is true; saying the Cretans are liars, Epimenides is himself a liar, and what he says is untrue. Thus we may go on alternately proving that Epimenides and the Cretans are truthful and untruthful."

Back to Mike Greenwell. Greenwell played 17 games in 1985, 31 in 1986 and was part of the American League Championship Series and World Series roster that year. I know a lot about the Red Sox, I’m no Thomas Fowler, but I know a bunch about the team. I remember Greenwell whiffing badly in Game Six of the World Series, but if you had told me that he got into 31 games that season, I would have thought you were lying – like Epimenides!

Greenwell didn’t really come into my fan consciousness until 1987, when he and Ellis Burks teamed up to be “The Gold Dust Twins V2.0”*. It was thought that not only was Greenwell going to carry on the Boston leftfield legacy for another generation (Ted Williams to Carl Yastrzemski to Jim Rice to Mike Greenwell) but that he and Burks were going to be the second coming (though mirror images) of Rice and Fred Lynn.

* Every time the Red Sox have two rookies come up in the same year and experience a little bit of success, the Boston Media falls all over itself to call them the incredibly clichéd “Gold Dust Twins”. It happens all the time. From Greenwell and Burks to Mo Vaughn and Phil Plantier to Mookie Betts and Xander Boegarts, you can bet your mortgage that someone (probably Boston Herald writer Steve Buckley or Globe scribe Dan Shaughnessy) is going to write a breathless column wondering if this new duo is the next GDT. Guys, I’m begging you, come up with a new name. Please.

Things were looking pretty good for Mike Greenwell in his first two years. He was an All-Star in 1988 (and 89) while finishing behind Jose Canseco (who was the first player to hit 40 homers and steal 40 bases when that was a HUGE thing) in the Most Valuable Player race*. Injuries took its toll on the Gator (that’s what he was called I guess because he was from Florida**) and he never reached the heights of that magical 1988 season.

* In the 2000s Canseco admitted to using steroids during the 1988 season, Greenwell began banging the drum that HE should now get the 88 MVP trophy because his former teammate (they ended up on the Sox together in 1995) was a cheater. That seemed kind of dumb, a waste of time and a bit desperate. Greenwell knew that he wasn’t going to retroactively get the award, right?

He was out of baseball at the age of 32 in 1996.

Greenwell was an interesting player and drama always seemed to find him. He was a butcher in left field and there were times when it seemed that he was going to inadvertently kill Ellis Burks** when the two would chase a fly ball. He would constantly say dumb things to the press and then get into fights with reporters over what he said. He got into a fight with Mo Vaughn while they were taking afternoon batting practice because Vaughn didn’t “know his place”.

** According to Wikipedia, he found an alligator, taped up its mouth and threw it in Burks’ locker room. I’m not sure if this is a true story, but if it is, do you see what I mean about him trying to murder Ellis Burks? What the fuck, Mike? Jesus.

That wasn’t a racial thing, but more a veteran-rookie thing. I guess in the baseball world if a veteran wanted to hit BP, he’d just cut in front of a rookie and the first-year guy was just supposed to shut up and take it (baseball players are just the worst—they really are). Vaughn never took any crap from anyone so they exchanged words which led to the rolling around on the dirt in Anaheim. It was kind of a big deal in the papers that week because by this point the Red Sox sucked, the Patriots stunk and it was too early to figure out whether Larry Bird and Cam Neely were going to suit up for their respective winter teams. So, it was all Gator and Mo, all the time.

At that point, I was pretty much done with Mike Greenwell. He devolved into an injury-plagued iron glove who didn’t hit with much power, but carried himself as top echelon guy. He was an extremely destitute man’s Wade Boggs, without the defense and the eccentric behavior. Greenwell also seemed to embody every dumb stereotype of Florida in one package: he loved NASCAR, he had that dumb, unironic mustache, that slow drawl and cackle.

Mo Vaughn was from the Northeast and he had that East Coast swagger. He was the future of the Sox and everyone knew it.  Mo talked big, he hit big and this hulk of a dude was going to lead the Sox somewhere. The Hit Dog (as Vaughn was known as) also seemed like a genuinely good guy—we all knew about his charity—and he sounded smart (though later we found out he did a lot of dumb things) especially compared to the Gator (both nicknames were pretty dumb in retrospect). When Mo chucked Greenwell around the Big A, it felt as if it was a palace coup and Vaughn was now in charge.

Unfortunately, Mo lead the Boston Red Sox to the same place that Greenwell did: an ass-kickings in the first round of the playoffs.

Looking back on Greenwell, he had a decent career: he hit for a better than decent average, had an okay batting eye, could drive in runs (he holds the all-time record for most Game Winning RBIs in a season with 23 in 1988, a record that will never fall because Major League Baseball no longer recognizes it as a valid statistic) and made $22 million. I’d take that.

And to be honest, it probably was unfair of me to project my feelings onto a guy I never met and only “knew” through 30-second soundbites. Greenwell probably wasn’t an Everglades Einstein, but who cares. The guy was paid to hit and he did a relatively decent job at it.

What's crazy to me is that Greenwell's son Bo was drafted by the Indians in 2007 and spent six years in the club's minor league system before going over to the Sox in 2014. His baseball career is done. Damn it, I feel old. 

Ever since John Henry and his crew came to own the Red Sox, they’ve done a lot of outreach with Red Sox alumni, even ones that left town acrimoniously (and there are a lot that have done just that). But the one guy you never see at the ballpark is Mike Greenwell. The guy played his entire career with one team: the Boston Red Sox, he was a star when the team desperately needed new ones and with better PR, he could have been the first version of Kevin Millar.

Come back Greenie, all is forgiven. Mostly.