The Boston Red Sox did something unheard of this past weekend. They changed their look so radically that it seemed to rattle some of their fans.
For three days leading up to Monday’s 11 a.m. game against the Chicago White Sox, the Red Sox broke out blue-and-yellow uniforms with blue hats. They looked like a softball team out there (and played like one Sunday while being swept in a doubleheader), but it was for a good cause. It honored the victims of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
The melding of the Red Sox and the marathon came as part of a deal Major League Baseball has made with Nike to come up with alternative uniforms. The Red Sox were the first of a number of MLB teams to introduce these uniforms, and they immediately came up with the color scheme as a way to connect with the marathon and the terrorist bombing that claimed five lives and injured hundreds more. The blue and yellow represent the colors that are painted on the marathon finish line.
As you may recall, the Red Sox used the marathon bombing as a rallying point to win the World Series that season — something no one expected them to do. In fact, it may have been a member of that team — Will Middlebrooks — who first said the words “Boston Strong.” During the civic parade after the Sox won the World Series, the duck boats carrying them around town stopped at the finish line so the team could formally acknowledge the horrific event that inspired them.
So it’s not a terrible thing that these uniforms were devised as a way for the Sox to honor their commitment to MLB and Nike. However, the $425 price tag on an authentic jersey may be a little too steep for those who might like to buy one. But hey, if you do, that’s your choice.
And there’s the rub. It’s not possible, capitalism being what it is, to do something out of sheer sentimentality. There always needs to be an angle. And it always comes down to money.
I can recall, in 2003, taking a side trip to Ground Zero in New York while I was covering the Red Sox-Yankees American League championship series. There were signs all over the place warning that selling mementos was not allowed. I got it. Few places deserved to be treated as a shrine more than the site of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the twin towers. Using it as an occasion to make a few bucks seemed to me to be uncommonly crass.
Yet there people were. And nobody really stopped them, either. That’s because our free enterprise system is like life itself. To all you people who saw the original “Jurassic Park” movie, what did Jeff Goldblum say? “Life, uh, finds a way.”
So does money.
But as much as I may make that observation with all the cynicism it deserves, it is an incredibly naïve observation as well.
This is the United States. There’s a lot to be said about the free enterprise system that rules our economy, but there’s also a downside, and I’d say it’s well-defined in circumstances like this. I love the sentiment, but I don’t love the money grab — even if I know it’s inevitable.
My only way of protesting is not to buy one of those shirts. And I do not. I have never bought replica sports gear, save for commemorative baseball caps representing all of Boston’s championship teams (half of which were given to me as gifts). There’s a real good chance that anything other than a cap that has a team logo on it was given to me.
But my late sister-in-law did. When we were going through her things last month, we came upon Bruins shirts and jackets, Patriots gear, and Red Sox jerseys just sitting there in her closet. Lord only knows what she was going to do with all that stuff, but there it was.
Some people, I guess, are drawn to it. Me? I couldn’t care less.
All I can say — after saying all that — is that at least the Red Sox used the occasion, crass though it may have been, to shine light on something that none of us will ever forget. And it was so central to their own success in 2013 as well.
And with any luck at all, this pandemic will be far enough behind us on Patriot’s Day 2022 so that we can hold the marathon on the day it’s supposed to be held.
