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?

Jim Rice 1988 Fleer

 Sometime in January 2023 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

 

 

 

Jim Rice was my first favorite baseball player. This is strange mainly because I don't ever recall him doing anything really awesome in my formative years as a baseball fan. I became a huge baseball fan in 1986, mostly because Roger Clemens went super nova that spring and summer and the Boston Red Sox were streaking their way to the pennant. 

Prior to that year, I liked baseball, I just wasn't obsessed with it. I played Little League, I watched the Baseball Bunch, I vaguely remember watching the San Diego Padres/Detroit Tigers World Series at my grandparents' place in 1984 and of course, I'd watch a few innings of the Sox when there weren't any cartoons on. 

When I think back to those years, I remember thinking about Jim Rice and how awesome he was. I just can't tell you why I felt that way. I can tell you how mad I'd get when my father would say that his license plate should be: "6-4-3". I can tell you I'd get even more furious when he had to explain the joke. 

Maybe it was because Rice was the de facto star of those early 80s teams and the club seemed to revolve around him. Though it's more likely that to a ten-year-old, Rice seemed impossobly big--almost like a superhero--but one who could hit home runs over the net in Fenway and onto the street. 

 There are human beings that can hit a ball entirely out of a Major League park? And they play for the team that I root for? I thought that he was awesome. 

By the time that this card was released, Rice wasn't hitting that many home runs any more. And the ones he hit were arching parabolas that landed on Lansdowne Street. His last really good year was the aforementioned magical year of 1986 when he finished second in the league's Most Value Player voting to Roger Clemens. 

In 1987 when he was 34-years-old, he was an average ball player. In 1988, below average and in 1989, even worse than that. Baseball is a game where if you aren't downing or injecting enough drugs to power the 1972 East German weightlifting team, the fall from the cliff is swift and far--especially if you were a star. 

There were a lot of whispers that Rice wasn't really motivated to stay in baseball shape (the dude was always pretty cut, so I'm not sure where that was coming from) and preferred to golf rather than work on his swing. Another rumor was that Rice really, really needed eye glasses to pick up the ball and his ego wouldn't allow him to put them on. 

Whatever the reason was Rice was no longer "the most feared hitter in the American League"--a moniker he had in the late 70s through the 80s. In 1987, that entire Red Sox team got a facelift; veterans like Don Baylor, Bill Buckner and Dave Henderson were either traded for parts or released. Kids like Ellis Burks, John Marzano, Sam Horn and Todd Benzinger took their spots in the lineup. New left fielder Mike Greenwell took Rice's position, exiling the former slugger to part time Designated Hitter, a role he shared that season with Horn.

In 1988 the Sox made a surprise run after manager John McNamara got the gate at the All-Star break. Working-class hero Joe Morgan took over the team on an interim basis and the Sox did so well that they found themselves at the top of the AL East standings and Morgan was named full-time manager of the Sox. 

During this streak, every move Morgan made seemed to turn to gold so when he sent up light-hitting shortstop Spike Owen to hit for Rice during a tight ballgame, Rice was pissed. They got into a shoving match in the tunnel to the clubhouse, which was caught by TV cameras and Morgan is quoted as yelling, "I'M THE MANAGER OF THIS NINE!" which is both kind of a badass thing to say to a guy that is strong enough to rip you apart with his bare hands, but also kinda corny too. 

Since Morgan was winning, a local guy (he drove a snow plow during the winter which made the people around here absolutely love him) and was white, Rice got a lot of shit for not being a "team player", playing the game "gracefully" and not following Morgan's orders. BTW, I can't remember what Owen did in that at bat, that 88 team was bananas, so Owen could have taken the guy deep and the Sox might have won. I have no clue. 

BTW, I'm not saying the Morgan was wrong here. Rice should have handled this much better, but the reaction from the fans was a little insane. 

From that point on, Bostonians were done with Jim Rice. He made too much money, he was too old and he was a bit too mouthy. He hung on for another year and during the last weeks of the 1989 season it was announced that Rice was hanging up his cleats. The Red Sox asked him to share a retirement ceremony with long-time teammate Bob Stanley which made Rice angry. 

 I wrote about this in my last entry on Bob Stanley that that was a shit thing for the Sox to do and if I was Rice, I'd be angry too. Hell, if I was Stanley, I'd be pissed. You can have two retirement ceremonies, no one is going to give a shit. Especially for that dead ass team. 

When he was a player, Rice didn't talk too much. He was described by the almost entirely white Boston press corps as "sullen and rude", the guy didn't make their jobs easier. And why should he? As the star of the club (pre Clemens and Wade Boggs), Rice was a lightning rod. Everything he said became 50-point headlines. The amount of unconscious and conscious racism was huge during that time, dating back to when he and Fred Lynn both made their debuts together as the Gold Dust Twins. He was a quiet kid from South Carolina who was thrown into a racial tempest that was Boston in the 1970s. By the 80s, he probably just got sick of the whole thing and it's hard to blame the guy. 

When he retired Rice became the Sox hitting coach (honestly, he wasn't really great -- I don't recall any hitter saying that Rice helped them) and then in a surprise to many he went to NESN and became a Sox commentator. Before and after games he'd talk about what the Sox did and didn't do and he was actually kind of decent. He spoke with a lot of cliches but he looked like he was having some fun and, hey, I still like the guy a lot; so that was cool by me. 

It took Jim Rice 15 years to finally make it into Cooperstown. And for as much as I love the guy, he probably shouldn't be in there. His numbers are good, but are they really good? Compared to other Hall of Famers--as well as guys on the outside looking in like fellow 1978 MVP Dave Parker--he's on the low end of the HoF spectrum. But I'm okay with that. I'm a big Hall guy to begin with, so you can add another 25 guys to the hallowed halls of Cooperstown and I'd be fine with that. 

For as long as I've been aware of baseball, I've liked Jim Rice a lot. For a guy who was so excellent at baseball, he always seemed to me to be a bit of an underdog. Even when he was the unquestioned star, it seemed that the press and the fans were always looking for someone (usually whiter) else to hang their hat on. And I liked those dudes. As far as I'm concerned Jim Rice fucking ruled.

Bob Stanley 1990 Fleer

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

 

Bob Stanley never seemed to quite enjoy baseball.

He wasn’t good enough to be a curmudgeon like Steve Carlton. He wasn’t like Wade Boggs who was very serious about his craft, hitting, and his job, baseball. He definitely wasn’t like Ken Griffey Jr. or George Brett, two players who exuded joy every time they stepped foot on the diamond.

Stanley appeared to be a dude who would walk around his house and grumble about having to face “the fucking Orioles” this weekend as he stuffed a gym bag full of gear before saying good bye to his wife and jumping in his car. When I was younger, in the mid 80s, Stanley was the dude who got called into a game when the Sox were close or leading and would usually give up the lead. When he was giving post game comments he always had a hang dog expression and was constantly explaining why his off-speed pitches hung and why his fastball was flat.

 

The only time I saw any joy is when a beachball would leave the bleachers and go into the bullpen or field. Stanley was like a beachball grim reaper as he grabbed a metal rake and popped the offending orb. He was usually greeted with boos, which is something that by that point in his career, Stanley was more than used to.

 

Stanley wasn’t always the recipient of boos though and a person’s entry into the game and the introduction to its players matters. You see, I always thought that Bob Stanley stunk. To me, his name was synonymous with a blown lead or a horrible loss (see Game 6 of the 1986 World Series), but it wasn’t always like that.

 

Once upon a time, Bob Stanley was pretty good. Strike that, Bob Stanley was really good. From 1977 through 1985, he was a durable reliever. He didn’t strikeout a ton of guys, but at the same time he didn’t walk a lot of people either. He gave up his fair share of hits, but if he wasn’t walking a ton of folks, they weren’t exactly doing a lot of damage. His ERA was anywhere from the mid twos to the mid threes (except for 1979 when it was 3.99, but he also started 30 games that year) and he made the All-Star team twice in 1979 (kinda ironic) and 1983. He even lead the league in ERA+ (140!) in 1982.

 

Like I said, he really wasn’t that bad.

 

But when I entered the baseball universe, it was 1986 and that was Stanley’s first really bad year. He had turned 31 that year and had a ton of innings under his belt, it appears to me that he the end was getting close for the Steamer. This happens all the time now and managers are conscious of what happens when you have a pitchers with a lot of miles on his arm, you provide him with “load management”. In other words, you’re not running him out there every other day like John McNamara did.

 

Stanley appeared in a career high 66 games (82.1 IP)  that year giving up 109 hits, 40 earned runs and surrendering 10 dingers for an ERA of 4.37, which translated into a 96 ERA+ and a 1.59 WHIP. He had 16 saves which suggests that he was the team’s “stopper” before Calvin Schiraldi was ready, but man, Red Sox GM Lou Gorman really needed to get his head of his ass* and pick up someone who was reliable in the bullpen.

 

* You know what happened in 1986. At the absolute worst possible moment, the bullpen melted down like Three-Mile Island. All year, the bullpen was an issue and I don’t know who to blame. Was it Gorman for not getting McNamara more bullpen help during the year? Or was it McNamara for destroying the arms in his bullpen by pitching the same few dudes day after day after day?

After 86, Stanely never really recovered. The next year the Sox made him a starter and when Roger Clemens was holding out for more money, he was given the ball on opening day. He got his ass handed to him by the Milwaukee Brewers who promptly swept the Sox in the opening series, setting a tone for the rest of the year for both Stanley and the team. The Sox never got over their World Series hangover and was rebuilding by midseason. Stanley had an awful year going 4-15 with a 5.01 ERA.

 

* Milwaukee would set an MLB recording by winning 13 games in a row to begin the season but still finished behind the Blue Jays and Tigers in third place with 91 wins. It was a different game, guys.

 

In 1988 Stanley had a better year (3.19 ERA and 130 ERA+, while appearing in 31 games) and the following year the Steamer just plain ran out of steam. But because of 86 and 87, Stanley’s name was pretty much mud around Fenway and fans were ecstatic that he was gone—finally we can begin the John Dopson and Tom Bolton era. At least that’s how I remembered it.

 

So maybe he had reason to grumble and be angry about his lot in life. He never really got the respect that he deserved. I’m not sure if it was for his body of work or his body (he retired at 34 and he looked like he was a 54-year-old dentist). Yeah, he’s playing a kid’s game and he got paid handsomely for it (more than $1M a year since 1985) but at the end of the day, baseball can be a job just like any other job. You have your good days and your bad days. But the sucky thing about baseball is that your bad days are played out in front of 30,000 people live—not to mention the thousands of folks watching at home—and the airwaves and newspapers discuss how shitty you did that day.

 

That has to wear on a guy.

 

Also, his teammates seemed like absolute dicks to him. When Boggs was caught cheating on his wife with Margo Adams one of the stories that slipped out was how teammates Boggs and others—including Stanley’s bullpen “friend” Steve Crawford—hated how Stanley was faithful to his wife. So they enacted a plan called “Delta Force” where they got Stanley shitfaced, put him to bed, sent a prostitute to his room and then busted in and took pictures of the “affair”. I don’t know what they were going to do with the photos (send it to Stanley’s wife if he didn’t start cheating on her?) but that just fucking sucks.

 

Fuck you Wade Boggs and double fuck you Steve Crawford. At least Boggs could hit, you just sucked.

 

The other thing that I remember was that in 1989 both Stanley and outfield Jim Rice were “retiring” after that season—they were probably pushed out by the team. The Red Sox wanted to honor both men and they set up a day at the end of the season where both players would be recognized simultaneously. For some reason, this really made Boston sports fans and writers really angry.

 

“How could they do this to Jim Rice? He’s given so much to this organization and he has to share his day with Bob fucking Stanley? That’s absolutely ludicrous and the Red Sox should be ashamed!”

 

I was part of this caterwauling but looking back, why? Yes, Rice had a longer more illustrious career. There’s no doubt about that, but it’s not like Bob Stanley was Tim Lollar or Steve fucking Crawford. He had a lot of terrific moments for Boston and now when he was getting the proverbial gold watch people were trying to stick it to him one last time? It was a bush league reaction. I can’t exactly remember what happened, but I’m pretty sure they gave Stanely his own day and the following day they gave Rice his.

 

Maybe they should have done that—the Red Sox were notoriously tone deaf about a lot of stuff back then—but jeez, what a shitty way to end your career. At the end of the day, Stanley’s only crime is that he never hid what a grind the Major League Baseball season is and he wore it on his face. People don’t want to come to the park to see that, they want the Pagliacci clown, the guy who’s smiling on the outside and they don’t give a fuck about what’s on the inside.