Character references
Your beloved Red Sox are exciting only on the field
WASHINGTON — Manny Machado didn’t literally have one foot out the door as he gabbed yesterday at Nationals Park, but you get the idea.
The Baltimore Orioles likely will trade their stellar shortstop, and it’s going to happen soon. This means Machado was the newsiest player at Major League Baseball’s All-Star workout day, and he had a bigger crowd than you’ll find at most Orioles games these days.
But after that? Brace yourselves, New England baseball fans, because it’s time to share your beloved Red Sox with the world. The Sox will have five representatives at tonight’s All-Star Game with starters Chris Sale (pitcher), Mookie Betts (right fielder) and J.D. Martinez (designated hitter) joined by first baseman Mitch Moreland and reliever Craig Kimbrel.
And Boston’s Gang of Five, especially Betts and Martinez, were in huge demand yesterday.
At 68-30, the Red Sox have the best record in baseball. Onefifth of their 25-man roster is in Washington for the All-Star Game. Sale is going to make history as only the third pitcher to start three straight editions of the Midsummer Classic, joining Hall of Famers Lefty Gomez of the Yankees (1933-35) and Robin Roberts of the Phillies (1953-55). Betts has emerged as a topof-the-charts MVP candidate. Martinez is having a David Ortiz/Manny Ramirez kind of season.
And yet it’s funny: The Red Sox don’t shake the room as they did in days of old, with Big Papi’s bombast, Ramirez’ goofiness, Pedro Martinez’ swagger.
They just go out and . . . win. Consider that Betts, asked yesterday if it has occurred to him just how popular he’s become, said, “You just start to hear your name more.”
But rather than continue on that track with perhaps an anecdote about adoring fans and eyepopping endorsement offers, he went back to offering the equivalent of eating all his vegetables and finishing his homework.
“Still, you have to go to there and play, no matter where your name is or what your name is,” he said. “We have to put our clothes on the same.”
Does Mookie see himself as the new face of baseball?
“No,” he said. “I see myself as the product of hard work.”
But is it possible it’s Betts and the rest of the Red Sox do their jobs with a matter-of-fact precision that they’ve rocketed to the top of the standings and are on a pace to win 109 games?
This is what Martinez seems to be theorizing.
“From the moment I got to spring training, the first thing I noticed was that whether we’re losing by a lot or whether we’re winning by a lot, the mood is always the same,” he said. “There’s never any panic. There’s really no highs or lows, it seems like, in the clubhouse. Everything is even keel. To me, it’s almost like that’s who we are.”
Under most circumstances these words would be arriving via the bullet train from Cliché City. But look what we have here. The Sox, particularly over the past couple of weeks, have been winning games in spectacularly exciting fashion. Xander Bogaerts won a game with a walkoff grand slam. Two days earlier, Betts also hit a grand slam but did so as the culmination to a 13-pitch plate appearance against the Toronto’s J.A. Happ and then celebrated with such fervor as he moved up the line that, hey, wait a minute, maybe these guys have a pulse.
It was only after that game, a 6-4 victory, that Betts returned to eating all his vegetables and finishing his homework. Tom Cruise may have had all the right moves, but Mookie Betts says all the right things.
And that’s, what, a bad thing? If Betts, Martinez, Bogaerts and the others keep hitting home runs, if Sale keeps winning his starts, if Jackie Bradley Jr., keeps making his weekly web gem and hits a little, nobody should mind if the postgame quotage is more like nice, bland postgame porridge.
No, they don’t have Pedro Martinez talking about drilling the Bambino.
They don’t have Kevin Millar talking about downing pregame shots.
They don’t have David Ortiz charging into the manager’s pregame press conference to publicly complain about a scorekeeper’s pen stroke that cost him a ribbie.
“Papi is Papi,” shrugged J.D. Martinez. “You’re never going to replace it.”
True. The 2018 Red Sox have zero characters. But they do have five All-Stars and a 68-30 record, so there’s that.