TOM BRADY AND MOOKIE BETTS…IN THE SAME YEAR
Seriously.
Are you kidding me?
Or, aahhr you shittin’ me?
This is Boston!!!
Wow.
Boston.
Pompous, conceited fan base, entitled, white, racist(?) blah…
Terribly spoiled since 2004.
I know.
And before that, to be fair.
Whining?
Seriously?
After all these recent championships?
ACROSS THE BOARD?
I know.
Like Biden says:
C’MON MAN!!!
Well, just tell the truth!!!
You don’t wanna keep spendin’ the dough.
The moolah.
The geedis.
EXTRA, EXTRA!!!
For the immediate, the New England Patriots and the Boston Red Sox have put it on hold.
(Thank God we still have the Bruins and the Celtics).
Have you ever been put on hold?
For what seems an interminable length of time?
Well if you haven’t, get used to it.
In these cases particularly.
Sorry fans, some of whom pay the highest ticket prices on the planet; for now, you’ll watch next to nuthin’.
Nothing.
Because money doesn’t grow on trees.
Even if you have it stockpiled.
It really never did…grow on trees, that is.
And what if you are ownership, or a partner, and you’re just tired of spending it?
Certainly, that would be your privilege.
For now???
Or forevah???
It’s fuckin’ ovah!!!
And don’t hold your breath…unless you enjoy the bluish hue it brings to your cheeks.
Sunday (October 25) the Patriots lost at home for the second consecutive week, this time to the 49ers by an embarrassing and overwhelming score of 33–6.
Their record is 2–4.
On the same day, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, led by the indefatigable Tom Brady and the irrepressible Gronk — why can’t we get players like that? — spanked the Las Vegas Raiders and coach “Chuckie” by a convincing 45–20 margin in Vegas.
The 43-year-old Brady — either no longer desirous of remaining a Patriot after 20 glory-filled seasons, or no longer wanted around here — was 33/45 for 369 yards and 4 TDs with no picks.
Meathead Gronkowski caught 5 balls from his buddy, good for 62 yards — 12.4 yds/avg — and a TD.
Gronk, by his own admission, is in Tampa to block; he’s targeted, if and when, it befits the particular game plan.
The perennial doormat Bucs are 5–2.
Last night (Tuesday October 27) Markus Lynn “Mookie” Betts helped the Los Angeles Dodgers win their first World Series championship in 32 years.
He scored the winning run and hit a solo HR to spark and then cap a 3–1 series clinching win.
I’M WICKED FUCKIN’ SICK, HEAH!!!
IN BOSTON.
Why?
Simply because it didn’t have to be this way.
At all.
Or as my mother and grandmother used to say, “a’tall.”
Brady’s exploits on the gridiron are legendary and cut too wide and broad a swath to enumerate on these pages. Suffice to say that he is widely considered to be the greatest quarterback ever.
THE G.O.A.T.
Last season, his twentieth with the Patriots — and the NFL record for seasons as quarterback for one team — was atypical for Brady; it wasn’t good, relatively speaking.
He wasn’t good.
Sure he threw for over 4,000 yards (4,057) and a modest 24 TDs with only 8 picks, but he completed just 60.8% of his passes and registered a pedestrian QBR of 88.0 — very un-Brady-like numbers.
The Patriots finished 12–4 (after an 8–0 start) and were upset at home in the Wild-Card round of the playoffs — the first time in 10 years that New England did not earn a first round bye — by the Tennessee Titans, 20–13.
Brady was 20–37 for a paltry 209 yards, completing 54.1% of his passes and recording a 59.4 QBR.
For the only time in his playoff career, he did not throw a touchdown pass in a contest and in fact, the last pass he threw in the game — and as it turned out, in his Patriot career — was intercepted and returned for a touchdown by former teammate and Titans cornerback Logan Ryan.
His last pass as a Patriot was a pick-6.
During that 2019 season, when it was the Pats defense winning games while the offense was largely stagnant, Brady confided in friends that he “felt Belichick had taken the offense for granted because of how good it had been for so long.”
And in spite of the team’s perfect start to the 2019 campaign, he admitted to NBC at the time, that he was the “most miserable 8–0 quarterback in the NFL.”
On March 17, 2020, the day before his contract with the Patriots was to expire, Brady announced that he would not re-sign with the club for the 2020 season, bringing his spectacular 20-year tenure in New England to a somewhat embarrassing and humiliating, if not ignominious close.
At the risk of oversimplification, for some reason in 2019, Belichick — arguably the greatest NFL head coach in history and also the man responsible for assembling the talent as the Patriots’ GM — could not, or would not surround Brady with the offensive pieces to which he had become accustomed.
Brady would probably not offer that as an excuse — certainly not publicly — but it was plain to see.
Also, the scuttlebutt had it that Brady was miffed with respect to the discussions about his contract in terms of their tenor and their frequency.
Or their infrequency.
His feelings were hurt and then, he was angry.
But nobody thought he would leave.
He left.
And it didn’t have to happen.
As an aside, Brady’s numbers quarterbacking the 5–2 Bucs, thus far this season, look like this:
7 G; 7 GS; 176 Cmp-268 Att; 65.7%; 1,910 Passing Yds; 18 TDs; 4 Int; 102.7 QBR
The Boston Red Sox finished with a woeful 24–36 record in this 2020 COVID-truncated MLB regular season — a .400 winning percentage, their worst since 1965 — and a firm hold on the AL East cellar, one game behind the moribund Orioles, and 16 games out of first place.
In February of 2020, the Sox finalized a trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers, sending Mookie Betts, the 2018 AL MVP, along with five-time All-Star and 2012 AL Cy Young Award winner David Price, to LA in a good old-fashioned and classic salary dump.
The Red Sox didn’t want to pay Betts — one of the top two or three players in the game — and were so eager to part with Price that they agreed to pony up half of the $96 million left on his contract.
Clearly the transaction was grossly lopsided although the Sox received some nice young prospects, notably Alex Verdugo, but their goal was achieved.
They saved a shit-ton of dough.
In doing so they are remaking the face of the franchise in the image of the Tampa Bay Rays, a World Series team with baseball’s third-lowest payroll.
Welcome Chaim Bloom, the former Senior VP of Tampa’s Baseball Operations (2005–2019) and now the Chief Baseball Officer of the Red Sox.
Sox owner John Henry wanted to get under the Luxury Tax and then continue to cut costs.
Mission accomplished.
Red Sox fans have an extended snooze-fest anxiously awaiting them; a dyed-in-the-wool rebuild.
“Bridge years” as opposed to a single “bridge-year.”
It’s gonna take a very long time.
It’ll seem like forevah!!!
Betts (and Price) gone in February.
Brady gone in March (with Gronk un-retiring to join him shortly thereafter, in April).
The coronavirus sweeping in around then, and continuing to rear its ugly head with a multi-spiked vengeance today — 8, 9 or 10 months later, depending upon whom you ask.
No light at the end of the tunnel.
Not for the virus, the Patriots or the Red Sox.
And to rub salt in the open wounds, none of it had to be this way.
A damned shame.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in late-October 2020.]
