Time Out for Sports Talk: Odds and Ends, Summer Edition
Todd: Another quarterly deleting of files from the hard drive before the TOST blog takes a couple weeks of summer vacation…
Aside from the proliferation of back-to-school advertisements, a sure sign that summer is fleeting resides down in Foxboro, Mass. where the Patriots have nearly drawn a higher attendance at their first four team practices (about 45,000) than the Oakland Raiders averaged at their home games last season (just over 50,000). Al Davis must be spinning in his grave.
Despite the local media’s attempts to try whipping me into a fanatical frenzy because the Pats have ‘loaded up’ and should be considered one of the favorites to take home their fourth Lombardi trophy, I’m not ready to embrace this team.
As I mentioned just after last year’s AFC Championship loss, how I view the Pats as a fan has markedly changed over the last six-and-a-half years. Whereas I once witnessed an offensive juggernaut that I assumed was poised to make football history, I now look at this franchise and assume nothing. As they like to say in the state in Missouri, show me first.
Six months ago when the Pats’ season ended in Denver, I wondered aloud if we had already seen the best of the Brady/Belichick era. Granted, I had no idea during the offseason that the Pats would sign Revis and Browner to solidify what for years has been an average secondary at best. But where the 2007 me would have looked at those moves and expressed excitement over the upcoming season, the 2014 version of myself simply wonders whether Revis deserves to have an island named after him, if Gronkowski will be on the field after Christmas, and if the roster as a whole will not be decimated by injuries to key personnel.
However, my early thoughts on the Pats are being totally clouded by what’s going on over at Fenway. As the MLB trade approaches, it is extremely hard for me to fathom that the sports marriage between Jon Lester and the Red Sox has deteriorated to the point where it’s nearly certain they will break up this week. Can’t use irreconcilable differences as the reason for this divorce, because it sure feels like that Sox management is to blame for their bungling of these contract negotiations.
Not only does it depress me that the Sox would be willing to deal their veteran lefty after all he’s done for the club, but looking at the team payroll over the next few seasons, it’s not like they don’t have the financial flexibility to give him a contract with a high AAV. I also wonder if management doesn’t want to pay a home-grown talent like Lester, who exactly do they want to pay? Like it or not, baseball salaries continue to rise and the Red Sox are one of the few teams that can afford to keep up with MLB’s contract inflation rate. And if the team decides that John Henry’s philosophy of only giving guys under 30 the big-bucks deals is the way to go, I see many talented players leaving town in the years to come.
But for those of us holding out against long odds that even if Lester is dealt he could still re-sign with the club this offseason, there is LeBron James’ improbable return to the Cleveland Cavaliers earlier this month. Having forgotten to discuss this news when it happened, I’d like to briefly touch upon it now.
While I give LeBron some credit for returning home, it’s not like he took a ‘hometown discount’ (can’t tell you how sick I am of hearing that phrase these days). And let’s not forget that he can also opt-out of his new contract as early as next year. Are you kidding me? Can you imagine how Clevelanders would react to that news? New LeBron replica jerseys are being produced as we speak to replace the ones the fans burned four years ago; I can only imagine the size of the bonfire in that city if he left his hometown again.
For now, let’s let Cleveland and all of northeast Ohio enjoy this moment. They’re going through a sports championship drought that makes our ‘Loserville’ era of the 1990’s look like a blip on the radar. But if you believe there might be some kind of sports curse on the city, I’d find it hard to disagree after seeing the recent photos from Johnny Manziel’s Vegas trip. Just when it looked like the Browns finally did something positive since returning to Cleveland, it now appears their first round draft pick and Heisman Trophy winning quarterback will be holding a clipboard to begin his professional career.
Mike: Ahh...the MLB trading deadline, usually one of my favorite times of the year!
Usually I look forward to this to see who the Red Sox are going to pick up to help them down the stretch run. This year, it feels just so...weird.
We're so not used to having the Sox be sellers at the deadline, that I don't know what to feel. As of this writing (12:45 pm on July 31) Jon Lester is still a member of the Red Sox, but that seems very likely to change in the near future.
I'm not sure what to think about this.
One one hand, I'm not really excited to see Boston let go of easily their top pitcher. But on the other hand, I am not convinced that they really have a chance to resign him, so they might as well try and get some prospects while they can.
I think the problem lies with the guys that are left behind, I think a Lester trade is going to spark a lot of anger in the clubhouse, destroying team chemistry, which could lead to problems in future years as they have to get rid of some of the bad apples (beer and chicken anyone?)
Ultimately, I think Lester is going to be gone, and I don't think he's coming back.
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