Idle chatter while waiting for the Red Sox to throw up the white flag and start the big selloff …
We’ve read thousands of words on David Ortiz, and we’ve devoted much space here to Bud Fowler. Both deserved their days in the sun.
I want to talk about someone who may have been overlooked in Sunday’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony: Jim Kaat.
To appreciate Kaat, you have to go back 55 years, to Sept. 30, 1967, when the Red Sox had to sweep the Minnesota Twins on the last weekend of the season just to clinch a tie for the American League pennant. The Twins had Kaat and Dean Chance ready for the series, and beating both of them seemed a little too formidable. It wouldn’t have come down to such dire straits had the Red Sox been able to win at least one of two games against the terrible Cleveland Indians (ironically, Luis Tiant, who would have the best years of his career with the Red Sox, beat them in one of those games).
Kaat, a big lefty, went first and though Chance had a better record, Kaat was the better pitcher. He was the one the Red Sox weren’t looking forward to facing.
As the Sox could do nothing with him. But in the third inning, Kaat felt something pop in his elbow and had to come out. That was all the Red Sox needed. They won that game, came back to win the next one, and the rest was history.
Kaat is one of a handful of players to play in parts of four decades (Ted Williams is another one), beginning his career in 1959 and ending in 1983. He won 288 games. And he should have made the Hall of Fame well before now.
So even though I was happy for “Big Papi,” and thrilled that my little burg of Lynn made it onto the Cooperstown stage, I was overjoyed watching Kaat give his speech Sunday. It took 39 years for justice to prevail, but it did.
————
I’m going to pull a team switch here and ask you, the reader, what you think. If the opportunity presents itself, should the Celtics give the Brooklyn Nets Jaylen Brown for Kevin Durant?
I can’t make up my mind, but I lean toward no. They were a good point guard short of being in a better position to win this past June, and then seem to have addressed that situation. A competent point guard and a healthy Robert Williams and who knows?
———-
For whatever reason, baseball players seem to be hung up on unspoken protocol. First, it was Tony LaRussa crabbing because one of his own players unloaded on a position player who was pitching in a blowout and took him deep.
Now, Madison Baumgarner has the mad bum because Victor Robles of the Washington Nationals showboated a little after hitting a homer off him. By today’s Major League standards, Robles hardly did anything. But there was MadBum crying as if someone stole his Halloween candy.
Can these players just play? No wonder why MLB games are unwatchable.
———-
As long as we’re on the subject of Ortiz, by the way, I recall the night I knew the Red Sox had pulled off the steal of the century in getting him. It was Game 7 of the 2003 playoffs when the Red Sox were clinging to a 4-2 lead going into the eighth inning. Ortiz drove a David Wells pitch into the short porch in right at Yankee Stadium. There are more than a few Soxers, then as now, who’d have gone down without even taking a cut, so overwhelmed were they by the moment.
It wasn’t Ortiz’s fault horrendous management cost the Red Sox that pennant. He came up big — and continued to come up big for the next 13 seasons.
———-
Joenel Aguero’s choice to attend Georgia prompted this exchange with St. John’s Prep Coach Brian St. Pierre, who gets the luxury of having the Lynn native — deemed the second-best safety in the country — play for him this fall.
ME: You have one of the best DBs in the country, but you don’t have a quarterback.HE: You’d think we could find one. I don’t know what we’re going to do. We have some good running backs coming back though.
ME: So I presume you’re going to be running the football a lot this fall?
HE: Heck no. We’re throwing. We’ll figure it out.
