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The Red Sox as baseball satire

Move over, Stephen Colbert, Mike Judge and Armando Iannucci -- the 2015 Red Sox are a send-up worthy of a sick kind of praise.

By Bryan Joiner
Gregory Fisher-USA TODAY Sports

Last night's game had a perfect example of the epic troll the baseball goddz are putting on our poor boys. In the seventh inning, up 2-1 after Mike Napoli's towering home run, Dustin Pedroia bobbled a potential double play ball, causing A.J. Pierzynski -- of all demonpeople -- to be safe.

Then Red Sox legend Pedro Ciriaco, who batted cleanup for Boston in the historic garbage-time September of 2012 -- of all amiable, well-named people -- singled in the tying run. As is quickly becoming custom, the Red Sox then pitched Junichi Tazawa and lost convincingly.

In the killer seventh inning, Pierzynski had a bases-loaded walk, and John Farrell even got ejected arguing balls and strikes and checked swings during Ciriaco's at bat. This is master-class tragicomedy. I can dig it. I'm no BFIB, but I won't boo. I still like watching them.

They're always interesting, or at least almost as often as they would be any good. They are still very much characters: Hanley, Papi, Pedroia, Mookie, Napoli and now Xander. There's so much to work with that I find this sort of criticism difficult to register:

I don't know and have generally liked Jonny Gomes since 2013, but I hated him as a baseball player before that and I'm willing to re-learn it. There is a difference between having "character" and playing a character, insofar as the second is not an entirely arbitrary concept. The baseball field is as big a stage as any, but it is very much a stage. You are playing. How you do is not about who you are.

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The reason that tweet seems so, just, mean is that it seems like a shot at Hanley Ramirez and all the crap such a shot entails. Hanley is a character. And to be fair, it's not Hanley's fault the Red Sox threw $88 million at him, which he was uncharacteristically fast to catch all for the venal sin of loving the Red Sox organization. That guy can hit a baseball, and does it with the one of the most breathtaking swings in the game. Also his helmet falls off all the time and dyes the tips of hair.

If you do not like this guy, that is your problem. For all the good research on how baseball is changing and how the Red Sox' wait-and-pound approach may be outdated, you will like him when he's a DH.

Who are you going to hate? Pablo Sandoval? Good luck with that. Joe Kelly? Why bother? The front office? I don't see a point. The manager? Sure, but as the laughs mount it's hard to pin them on a dude standing in a cubby hole with tight pants.

This isn't baseball tragedy. It's baseball satire, and it's exquisite. I may still wag my finger, but I'll gladly tip my hat.

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