10 comments Bill Simmons Waits Until He Has Something to Whine About Before Writing His First Red Sox Column of This Season Part 1

Bill Simmons doesn't write about the Red Sox anymore. I don't know why. I can guess why. They aren't winning or competing for World Series titles over the past couple of years, so Bill doesn't seem to have as much of a need to write about them. Plus he has this insatiable need to be an NBA GM, so he writes about the NBA in the hopes of landing a GM gig. So far this season we have gotten a mailbag about Fenway Park and he has exchanged emails with a knowledgeable Red Sox fan. That's it though when it comes to the Red Sox. Otherwise, it has been a summer of NBA and Olympics talk. Now that the Red Sox have traded away Adrian Gonzalez and dumped Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford's salary on the Dodgers, Bill finds a way to review the bad direction the Red Sox were taking and tries to elicit sympathy (as usual) from his readers for a large market team that wasted millions of dollars. In typical Bill Simmons fashion he finds everything the Red Sox fans have suffered through to be exclusive to the Red Sox. Bill even uses the championships the professional teams from Massachusetts have won over the last decade of further proof of just how bad Red Sox fans have it. He tries to point out how great and bad Boston-area fans have it. He's insufferable and I feel sorry for Red Sox fans that he is your unofficial spokesman.

I wanted to name our newborn son "Beckett" right after the Red Sox won the 2007 World Series. If not for a reader intervening, my son might be named Beckett Simmons right now. We could start there.

Naming your child after an athlete who has been with your favorite team for less than five years and choosing that child's name simply because it is the last name of said athlete is always a bad idea. In fact, if you as a sports fan choose to name your child after an athlete and only choose that name because it is the athlete's name as well, then you probably deserve to be embarrassed five years later when that athlete becomes a punchline. This person would deserve at the very least to feel like an asshole every time he calls that child's name for the next 30-40 years.

The Red Sox have trotted out eight "superstar" hitters in my lifetime: Carl Yastrzemski, Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Mo Vaughn, Nomar Garciaparra, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez and Adrian Gonzalez. The first seven guys played a combined 83 seasons in Boston. Gonzalez lasted 21 months. We could start there.

"We're so cursed because we have only had eight superstar hitters over the last forty years, three of them probably/did use PEDs and one of those players didn't even stay for a full two years. We're so cursed! I need sympathy!"

I can't help but wonder what would happen if Bill cheered for a smaller market team who couldn't afford to keep their talent around. What if he was a Milwaukee Brewers fan? How annoying would he be at that point? Given the massive amount of navel-gazing and "woe is me" crap we get from him concerning the Red Sox, who are one of the most successful MLB teams over the last decade, I am guessing Bill would be whatever is worse than insufferable if he cheered for a small market team. If I were Bill Simmons, I would make a theory of insufferability based on bands who are insufferable. If Bill is at "Coldplay" level of insufferability as a Red Sox fan, he would be at "Maroon Five" level of insufferability if he were a Brewers fan.

My favorite baseball team just traded its best offensive player and a proven playoff starter

You will notice throughout this column how Josh Beckett vacillates between a no-good piece of shit overweight pitcher and a proven playoff starter depending on what Bill Simmons is trying to prove. In this situation, Bill wants sympathy so Beckett is labeled a proven playoff starter who Bill almost named his son after and not the overpaid useless pitcher who helped to destroy the Red Sox team and made Bill glad he didn't name is son after him. I have to give Bill credit, it is hard to gain sympathy for your team trading Beckett, while also bashing your team (in retrospect of course) for even having Beckett on the roster. To achieve this balance, Bill has to bend the truth a little bit.

in a massive salary dump that had no correlation to anything that's ever happened in Red Sox history except for … you know … the time we sold Babe Ruth.

Grow a pair of fucking balls. That happened 100 years ago.

Somehow, Red Sox fans are delighted about the trade. We could start there.

Yes, "somehow" Red Sox fans are delighted about the trade. Somehow Bill says Red Sox fans are happy and then spends the rest of this column describing how this trade is a good thing for the long-term prospects of the Red Sox. Yet again, he wants your sympathy for the Red Sox essentially giving up on the season, while glossing over the fact this is a great deal for the Red Sox.

The current Red Sox owners brought us our first championship since 1918 and a second title three years later. Since last October, they've replaced the most successful Red Sox manager in 90 years with the least-liked Red Sox manager of my lifetime not named "Grady Little." They've allowed the franchise's most successful general manager ever to break his contract without getting anything decent for him. They've assembled one of the league's three most expensive rosters, failed miserably, then lucked out when the Dodgers miraculously handed them a RESET button.

"Oh pity me! My team has won two World Series titles in the past ten years and the owners haven't made it three titles in the past ten years or maybe even eleven titles in the past ten years. The owners spent a shit-ton of money on players to make the fans happy and it didn't work out. How cursed are we? Our owners actively attempt to make the Red Sox team better than it was the year before, even if they are a bit misguided in their efforts, but this is a bad thing. I need sympathy!"

Quit whining. Bill gives Red Sox fans such a bad name. Try being a Cubs fan. Try being an Astros fan. Try being a Pirates fan. The last time the Pirates made the playoffs Barry Bonds was skinny before he got fat before he got skinny again. Every baseball fan hates his team at a certain point. My favorite team is run by a soulless corporation. They don't give a shit about what the team's record was last year or if there is a missing piece that would put the team over the top in the NL East. If it doesn't fit the budget, it doesn't fit the team. At least the Red Sox owners are trying to put a team on the field to win games and ignoring how they could make mistakes along the way. Every losing season isn't a disaster of epic proportions.

And now, headed for the worst Red Sox season in 20 solid years but blessed with financial flexibility again, these owners expect fans to (a) pretend the past two years never happened, and (b) trust their big-picture judgment again. We could start there.

The Red Sox owners have won two World Series in the last decade. We could start there. We could start at the part where Bill wrote an entire book saying he can die in peace and now only five years after the last World Series victory Bill doesn't trust the Red Sox owners anymore. We could start there.

After all, you are in a relationship with your favorite teams, right? We purchase tickets and merchandise; they purchase the players. We agree to remain loyal; they agree not to defecate on that loyalty.

This is where Bill is wrong. Not every team agrees not to defecate on that loyalty by actively putting together a great roster. Some teams try harder than others to put a good team together. The Marlins basically put together a roster for half a season in order to sell tickets to the new stadium, saw it wasn't working out immediately and then said "fuck it" and began yet another sale of players. The Astros aren't even trying at this point. The Padres are stuck with a small budget and basically are telling fans that this is as good as it is going to get for right now. The Nationals were going to suck for a few more years (you can't convince me this isn't true. They even resorted to the whole "we paid a lot of money for a player in free agency" tactic) until managed to stumble on the best pitcher and second-best hitter to come out of the draft in the past five years. Smart teams combine spending money with great player development. The Red Sox didn't want to be the Yankees so badly they have spent the past five years turning into the Yankees.

And it goes from there. The best-case scenario for any season? Winning the title. The worst-case scenario? Hate-watching your team while rooting for things to bottom out in a comically dreadful way just so you can remain entertained.

What Bill unsurprisingly fails to see is the best case scenario isn't even in play for some teams. He's fortunate in that this isn't true for the Red Sox because ownership will spend money on player development and free agents. Bill sees an even playing field where every year there is a best case and a worst case scenario that he just described. For certain teams this is possible, but for teams like the Blue Jays, Pirates, Orioles (and yes, I am including this year), Padres, Diamondbacks, Brewers, and a few other teams a solid run at the World Series is the best they can hope for. They aren't able to go into each season knowing their team will have a shot at making a run to the World Series.

By the way, I picked the Diamondbacks in the World Series this year. Do you know why? I'm a fucking idiot. For every year I put the Packers in the Super Bowl, I do something stupid like pick the Diamondbacks to make the World Series.

And look, I get it — listening to Boston fans bitch about sports is like listening to John Mayer bitch about his love life.

But Bill doesn't get it because he is writing this column. This is the whole "I won't be the person to complain" type of writing, which is normally followed by some complaining. So no, Bill doesn't get it. He defaults to what he knows best when discussing the Red Sox, which is whining.

We won seven titles in 10 years. Over that same time, we endured five of the most brutal playoff defeats in Boston sports history (the Aaron Boone Game, Super Bowl XLII, Super Bowl XLVI, the 2006 AFC championship game and Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals),

And now begins the whining. What entitled sports fan Bill fails to see is that these are five separate playoff appearances where the Boston sports fans endured brutal defeats. So Boston teams won seven titles in 10 years and had five other brutal losses in the playoffs. While Bill feels sympathy for himself and can't get past his entitled only-child syndrome to realize this is stupid, everyone else is wondering how they can get their favorite teams to make the playoffs on a consistent enough basis to suffer five brutal playoff defeats. Nobody wants to lose a tough playoff game, but it shows how successful Boston-area teams have been...yet Bill continuously whines and whines about how bad he has it as a fan of these teams.

Bill is just being a drama queen. Any loss in the Super Bowl or a Game 7 is brutal, so it isn't like Boston-area teams have a monopoly of tough losses over the last ten years. The enormous amount of entitlement shocks me. Well, it shouldn't shock me, Bill has written this way for years. Bill is using the fact his favorite teams were so successful over the last ten years as a negative and trying to act like Boston-area teams have suffered more difficult defeats over the last ten years (which again, any Super Bowl or Game 7 loss is tough), which really only speaks to the success of these Boston teams over the last ten years.

and trust me, Game 7 of the 2008 ALCS and Game 6 of the 2012 Heat-Celtics series weren't exactly a barrel of laughs. I can't imagine any fan base has experienced more extreme highs and lows over a 10-year span.

You are super-special, Bill! Is that what you want to hear? You aren't though. Every fan base has highs and lows over a 10-year span.

Bill should try to be a fan of teams who haven't experienced any extreme highs over the last ten years. How about him becoming a fan of Cleveland-area teams? Their extreme highs consist of getting far enough in the playoffs to experience an extreme low.

Nobody was more overdue for a hatefully expensive, totally unredeeming, insane clusterfuck of a season more than Red Sox fans. We knew it, too. We could handle a lousy season. It happens.

That's thing though. Bill can't handle a losing season. This column is what happens when a losing season occurs. There is a bunch of navel-gazing and gnashing of teeth about the future.

But something deeper was happening here. The Red Sox had morphed into something else.

Bill could handle the Red Sox having a losing season, but that's not what was happening here. What was happening here, was something so big and unexpected that it was deeper than the Red Sox having a losing season. Bill can't just simply let the Red Sox have a bad season. There has to be an underlying reason exclusive to the Red Sox as to why they are having a bad season.

So after stating he could handle a losing season, Bill claims this wasn't a losing season but was something much bigger than a losing season, thereby providing a narrative about how a Red Sox losing season is much bigger than a losing season other teams have. For some reason, Boston Celtics/Red Sox/Bruins and New England Patriots fans haven't hung Bill in effigy yet. He's probably 50% of the reason they get such a bad rap.

Once upon a time, the phrase "Red Sox fan" carried clear responsibilities and implications.

Oh for God's sake, stop writing this crap. It's tripe.

You loved something that, ultimately, was going to break your heart. You pined for a World Series title that was never going to happen.

Except the World Series victory has now happened, so shut the hell up about it. This is Bill's default setting when it comes to writing. He whines. What happened is called "the entrance of bandwagon fans" and every fan base has them. I know this disappoints Bill to no end, but hangers-on started calling themselves Red Sox fans. Success, the same success Bill craved so much and for some reason he doesn't believe the Red Sox ever achieved, changed the makeup of the fan base.

You watched family members pass away without ever seeing the Red Sox win a title. You wondered if it was cruel to saddle your children with this franchise, whether you should "save" them by nudging them in a different direction.

Yes, but that is the past and the present is happening now. Let go of the past and embrace the future. I know it is hard for Bill to do considering how much mileage (and money) he has gotten from constantly harping on the past.

And then everything turned. We won the World Series, shed the curse, buried some demons, moved on with our lives.

Moved on with your lives, huh? You can tell by this column Bill has completely moved on.

Maybe Bill was saying he doesn't pay attention to baseball anymore and has moved on from the sport. That would be more accurate.

Well, here's what happened. We started spending money like the Yankees.

Apparently signing Manny Ramirez to an 8 year $160 million deal in 2000, J.D. Drew $70 million in 2007 and giving Curt Schilling $12 million in 2004 were just under-the-radar signings.

The Red Sox won the World Series in 2007 with five guys who made $10 million or more and the team had the second-highest payroll in the majors at $143 million. The Red Sox had a payroll of $127 million in 2004, which was the second-highest payroll in the majors. Don't give me this crap about how the Red Sox started down a bad path by spending money like the Yankees. The Red Sox just didn't get the results they wanted by spending like the Yankees from 2008 until 2012. No team could match the Yankees when it came to spending, but the Red Sox were the closest team in the majors to spending like the Yankees spent even when they won their two World Series titles. The 2004 Red Sox "little team that could" was well-funded. I'm not taking anything away from them or knocking them. Bill's revisionist history doesn't sit well with me though. Don't give me this crap about how the Red Sox started spending like the Yankees. Compared to other MLB teams in 2004, the Red Sox were the Yankees.

The owners relentlessly pimped the Red Sox brand inside the stadium, on their website, on their 24-hour TV channel, on your street, in your house, on your forehead and everywhere else you could imagine (leading to a general dumbing down of the fan base

Of course Bill Simmons, the most popular columnist on the most popular sports site, relentlessly pimped the Red Sox as well by writing column after column about their run to the World Series title. Bill then pimped an entire book about this experience and I'm pretty sure he made a few bucks off that. Of course the most popular columnist on the most popular sports site could NEVER be responsible for the dumbing down of the fan base could he? I would submit Bill is one of the most high profile Red Sox fans in the United States, or at least in sports journalism. He wrote column after column about the Red Sox and made money off a book he wrote about the Red Sox. He tied everything back in to the Red Sox in his columns. Yeah, it's everyone else's fault for pimping the Red Sox brand though.

only we looked the other way because they kept funneling so much of their profits back into the team.

Which is what Bill will do again in five years. He's look the other way again when the Red Sox start winning again. I love the passing of the blame to the Red Sox owners. Granted, they share a lot of blame, but Bill had quite a time during the mid-2000's peddling Red Sox nostalgia and curse-discussion which led to an increased focus on the Red Sox and their hunt for a World Series title. He got a lot of fame and money from this peddling, but he would never blame himself would he? How could one of the most influential columnists in the United States, who just so happens to be a Red Sox fan, have any influence on that team's fan base?

Nobody really cared until the Red Sox finished the biggest September swoon in baseball history —

Everyone started freaking out at the idea the Red Sox aren't automatically penciled into the playoffs every single year. This realization must have really thrown Bill and his entitled attitude for a loop.

When Theo Epstein fled a few weeks later, for the first time, Red Sox fans started examining these last eight years the same way you look at a massive dinner check. You know when you go out with a bunch of friends, order food and drinks for three hours, never worry about anything, and then there's that moment when the check comes and everyone's passing it around in disbelief? That's for us? Did you think it was going to be that high?

Or as normal writers who have the capability to actually write concise, readable material might say,

"When Theo Epstein fled a few weeks later, for the first time, Red Sox fans started examining these last eight years and realized when expensive players don't produce it creates a bloated payroll and reduces roster flexibility."

The fan bases for other teams despised us just as much. We had the same "If you don't win the title, you've totally failed" conundrum staring at us every spring.

"We are cursed with such unjustifiable high standards for our team because we carry an entitled attitude about our team's inherent superiority. Feel sympathy for us."

Wasn't that the Red Sox? What were we building? What's fun about rooting for a team of staggeringly overpaid players who were collected with little rhyme or reason?

I don't know, it sure sounds like the Red Sox had a lot of fun making the playoffs and knowing they could be in the running for the best free agent hitter or pitcher during every offseason. I don't recall Bill complaining the Red Sox shouldn't sign John Lackey or predicting that Josh Beckett wasn't worth re-signing over 4 years at $68 million for 2011-2014. So obviously there was a lot of fun had by all. Bill is throwing this whole "It wasn't very much fun to cheer for these guys" bullshit when he seemed perfectly happy playing the game at the time.

Throw in the team's general unlikability (especially Beckett, who regarded the fans and media with real contempt) and for the first time I can remember, Red Sox fans were hate-watching games much like you'd hate-watch Teen Mom or something.

We haven't had many forced pop culture references. I'm glad Bill made up for this by throwing a "Teen Mom" reference in.

Well, who wants to spend three-plus hours a day hate-watching something? If you wanted to enjoy a Red Sox game in 2012, you had to get stoned, break out the 2004 and 2007 DVDs, put in one of the most exciting games and pretend it was happening in real time.

Or you could just deal with the fact nearly every team can have a bad season.

But here was the worst part … there was no way out!!!! Adrian Gonzalez had six years and $127 million remaining on his deal. Carl Crawford had five years and $102.5 million remaining. John Lackey had three years, $45.75 million.

And yet again, when the Red Sox traded for Adrian Gonzalez and gave him a large new contract where was Bill Simmons at complaining about this? Bill was popping champagne corks and celebrating one of the best hitters in baseball was joining his favorite baseball team. There's a line from "The Sopranos" that reminds me of Bill Simmons. It is spoken by Tony Soprano's wife (Carmela) and it is said when Tony wants Carmela to sympathize with Tony's mistress who tried to kill herself after Tony broke up with her. Carmela says,

"You are putting me in a position where I am feeling sorry for a whore who fucks you?"

That's how I feel in this situation. Bill is putting his readers in a position where we are supposed to feel sorry for a large market team that has spent recklessly and didn't get a return on their investment? I can't do it and I don't see how his readers can. Well, I can see how his SimmonsClones readers can. They worship the very ground Bill Simmons hovers above.

(On a side note, I did an Internet search for "Carmela whore who fucks you" while at work like a moron. If you see my resume posted on this blog in a couple of days, you will know why.)

According to this list, four teams spent between $150 million and $200 million (Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox, Angels), five teams spent between $100 million and $149 million (Tigers, Rangers, Marlins, Giants, Cardinals), then 14 teams spent between $75 million and $99 million. That means the Red Sox, having totally squandered their spending advantage thanks to those four deals, needed to outmaneuver everyone else in 2013 and 2014 just to regain any semblance of a competitive advantage again.

Oh my God, if the Red Sox are unable to ever have a competitive advantage again then how will Bill continue to go on with life? He can't simply cheer for the Red Sox. He has to cheer for them fully knowing they have a competitive advantage over the other major league teams. It's not fun to cheer for a mid-market team. It's only fun to cheer for a baseball team who has a competitive advantage over nearly every other baseball team.

But the owners who OK'd the Lackey/Crawford/Beckett contracts, turned Francona into Valentine, didn't get anything for Theo, turned Josh Reddick and Jed Lowrie into Andrew Bailey and Mark Melancon, thought Daniel Bard could be converted into a starter, and paid another AL contender to take Kevin Youkilis when he wasn't really washed up yet?

How sad for you that your team doesn't have the best owners in baseball. Not only have the Red Sox lost their competitive financial advantage over other major league teams, but the air of superiority is rapidly being taken out of the fan base. At some point, the Red Sox are going to have to win more games or Bill may have to face the fact the Red Sox aren't entitled to be the one of the best teams in the majors every single year...and we just can't have that. Everything Bill says and does is the best. If the Red Sox stop winning over a few year span Bill would have to pronounce himself a "baseball widow" until the Red Sox get better owners who care enough to put a winning team on the field. This isn't Bill being a fair-weather fan at all. He will only exclusively be the fan of a winning team, that's all.

Maybe we hadn't veered into James Dolan territory or anything,

I would give it another ten years before the Red Sox are even close to this. The audacity of Bill even writing this sentence amazes me. The Red Sox would need a full decade of futility before they could come close to Dolan territory.

but in professional sports, you can't overcome poor management no matter how much money you have. The 2012 Red Sox were poorly managed. And have been for the past couple of years. It finally caught up to them.

In pretty much anything you can't overcome poor management. This isn't exclusive to professional sports. Of course Bill wasn't saying the Red Sox were poorly managed when they re-signed Josh Beckett, signed Carl Crawford and John Lackey and traded for Adrian Gonzalez, but that's the whole fun part about the revisionist history of it all. Looking back, Bill knows how everything should have been done differently, but he sure didn't say it at the time. Feel sympathy for him. He desperately wants it.

Part 2 in a day or so...