Lloyd Banks (ft. Swizz Beats, Kanye West & Fabolous) -- "Start It Up" (2010)

Break their back, don’t call 'em

Look down on 'em 

Like Dikembe, Patrick, Mourning

By the time I arrived in Cape Cod for my annual family vacation, most of the 2012 Olympics was over.  But I did catch the final men's basketball game, which matched the United States and Spain.

The Americans won most of their games easily.  The most one-sided of the contests was their 156-73 blowout of Nigeria.  (Carmelo Anthony managed to score 37 points in only 14 minutes of playing time in that game, which is mind-boggling.)  But in their next game, the U.S. team barely squeaked by Lithuania, 99-94.

Carmelo Anthony scores against Nigeria

The final game against Spain was also almost too close for comfort.  The Americans were only one point up going into the last quarter, and the 107-100 final score was the second-closest gold-medal game in Olympic history.

Kobe Bryant created some controversy by opining that the 2012 American team was better than the 1992 "Dream Team," which many believe is the greatest sports team ever assembled.  

"Dream Team" member Charles Barkley -- who's never hesitant to speak his mind -- said he "just started laughing" when he heard Bryant's comment.  Michael Jordan also took strong exception to the idea that the 2012 team was better.

Charles Barkley isn't missing any meals

Larry Bird admitted that the 2012 team would prevail -- if the two teams played each other today.  "I haven't played in 20 years," Bird said, "and we're all old now."  (Presumably Bird agreed with Barkley and Jordan that the 1992 squad was a superior team in 1992 to the 2012 team today.)

In case you've forgotten, the "Dream Team" included not only Barkley, Jordan, and Bird, but also Magic Johnson and seven other Basketball Hall of Famers.  (Christian Laettner was the only team member who didn't end up in the Hall of Fame.)  Its average margin of victory in the Olympics was an astounding 43.8 points, and it won the gold-medal game by 32.  

The 2012 team's average margin of victory was 32.1, and it won the gold by seven.  But the level of competition is much higher now than it was in 1992.  (In 1992, there were only 20 Olympic roundballers with NBA experience -- and 11 of them were on the American team.  In 2012, there were 57 players with NBA experience -- Spain's team included seven NBA'ers.)

Five members of the "Dream Team"

I suspect that if the 2012 team could somehow travel back in time to 1992 and face the "Dream Team," the 2012 team would win.  That's because I believe athletes are constantly improving over time.  Look at sports like track and swimming, where it is easy to compare winning times from different eras.  The 1992 world records in those events have been eclipsed time and time again in most cases.  

Thanks to advances in sports science, today's athletes have more effective training regimens and more efficient techniques, are better nourished, and get better medical treatment when they are injured.  The 1992 "Dream Team" was so dominant that it would be a close call if they faced off against the 2012 team -- but I think the best 2012 team in almost any sport would likely beat the best players in that sport from 1992.

Lloyd Banks

Lloyd Banks might disagree with me -- his basketball frame of reference in "Start It Up" is the "Dream Team" era despite the fact that this song was released in 2010.

The three former NBA'ers mentioned in the line quoted above are Dikembe Mutumbo, Patrick Ewing (a "Dream Team" member), and Alonzo Mourning (who was on the 2000 Olympic team, which also won a gold medal).  All three were dominating centers who had long and successful NBA careers.  Also, all three played their college basketball at Georgetown University, but it appears to be a coincidence that Banks chose to name three Hoyas -- there's no apparent link between the rapper and Georgetown.

Mutumbo, Ewing, and Mourning averaged seven feet tall, so they towered over most of their opponents much like Lloyd Banks believes he towers over rival rappers -- and much like Cape Cod's Scargo Tower towers over Scargo Lake and the surrounding area:

Scargo Tower

Scargo Tower is a 30-foot tall stone tower that was built on Scargo Hill (one of the tallest hills on Cape Cod) in 1902.  It's about two miles from the house where my family and I stay on our Cape Cod vacations, and I always drop by, climb the winding staircase to the top of the tower, and take in the view over Scargo Lake and Cape Cod Bay.

Scargo Lake (with Cape Cod Bay in the distance)

Here's an old postcard showing the view from the opposite side of the lake, looking back at Scargo Tower:

Scargo Tower was built as a memorial to certain members of a prominent local family, the Tobeys, who first came to Dennis in 1678.  The family gave the tower and the land it was built on to the town in 1929.

(Back to our featured song . . .)

Lloyd Banks and the guest performers on "Start It Up" -- Swizz Beats, Fabolous, and the one and only Kanye West -- are a hip-hop "Dream Team" of sorts.  "Start It Up" should probably be rated FMO -- "for males only."  It's probably a bit raunchy for most of you ladies.

The verses by Banks and Fabolous are solid, but Kanye West knocks it out of the park when it's his turn to step up to the microphone.  (No surprise there, of course.)

Patrick Ewing, Dikembe Mutumbo,
and Alonzo Mourning

Kanye picks up on Lloyd's reference to Mutumbo, Ewing, and Mourning with a basketball reference of his own.  But Kanye is less interested in the action on the court at the NBA All-Star Game than the action off the court:

I met this MILF at the All-Star, getting action

A cougar with more rings than Phil Jackson

Told her beauty is why God invented eyeballs

And her booty is why God invented my . . .

(You can probably guess what comes next.)

Yeezy knows his basketball.  Legendary coach Phil Jackson's teams won eleven titles, so he does have more championship rings than any other NBA coach.

Phil Jackson shows off championship ring #11

There are several ways to interpret the line about the cougar having even more rings than Jackson.  It could simply mean that she likes to wear a lot of jewelry.  (If she's hanging out at the NBA All-Star Game, she's probably got plenty of do-re-mi to spend on bling.)  

Or it could mean that she's been married numerous times.  (More than eleven marriages would be a lot, so Kanye might be engaging in a little hyperbole here.)  

Finally, the reference to Jackson's championship rings could be a play on words that refers to dendrochronology -- the science of determining the age of a tree by counting the rings that form in its trunk each year.  If so, don't take it literally -- Kanye's not saying the MILF is 12 years old.  He's just noting that Jackson has a helluva lot of championship rings, and that the cougar is like a tree with a lot of growth rings, too -- no spring chicken, in other words.

As the last line of Kanye's verse that I've quoted above indicates, he is a big fan of booty.  And as subsequent developments have demonstrated, he is a fan of big booties.

Yes, I'm talking about Kim Kardashian -- Kanye's current squeeze.  Here's a picture of the happy couple at the Cannes Film Festival:

And here's a picture that requires no introduction:  

Here's "Start It Up":

Click below to order this song from Amazon:

B-52's -- "Rock Lobster" (1979)

We were at the beach

Everybody had matching towels!

As previously noted, “Rock Lobster” was the first single the B-52's released from their eponymous (love that word!) debut album, and it was a big favorite of mine and my good friend and Federal Trade Commission officemate, Scott.  Click here to read about another song from this album and to learn more about how we got away with playing the B-52's all day when we were supposed to be working.

In the summer of 1979, Scott and I were assigned a college-student intern.  Mark was from Vermont, and he was a very affable guy.  (I Googled him today, and it looks like he is a portfolio manager for a large mutual fund firm.)

Mark loved “Rock Lobster,” as did I.  He was especially fond of the lines quoted above.

To the extent that "Rock Lobster" is “about” anything, it's about a teenage beach party circa 1965 – think Bikini Beach, Beach Blanket Bingo, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, et al. – that was threatened by a variety of scary sea creatures (including giant clams, sting rays, jellyfish, piranhas, and narwhals).

The beach party got off to a good start:

Everybody's rockin'
Everybody's fruggin'
Twistin' 'round the fire
Havin' fun
Bakin' potatoes
Bakin' in the sun
Put on your nose guard . . .
Pass the tanning butter!

Nose guard

The lyrics say everybody was frugging, but I'm guessing they were doing the swim  as well:



The first sign of trouble was when a scuba diver failed to surface:

His air hose broke
Lots of trouble
Lots of bubbles
He was in a jam
Was in a giant clam!

In the cartoons I watched as a kid, deep-sea divers were always getting swallowed up by giant clams – I’m not sure how often that happens in real life.

Things go from bad to worse after that:

Here comes a stingray
There goes a manta ray
In walked a jellyfish
There goes a dogfish
Chased by a catfish
In flew a sea robin
Watch out for that piranha!
There goes a narwhal

Here comes a bikini whale

You've never heard of a bikini whale?  Here's a picture of one:

Here’s a picture of a sea robin, which is a very weird-looking fish:

The narwhal is one of the oddest animals there is.  It’s a whale with a tusk – really a tooth (a left canine) – that is usually five to ten feet in length.  (The narwhal’s body is only about twice as long as the tusk). 

The tusk is rarely used for fighting, or to break sea ice.  It seems to be primarily a secondary sexual characteristic (like a peacock’s tailfeathers), but also may help determine social rank among bulls (male narwhals) in narwhal communities.  In other words, it serves the same role for narwhals as expensive foreign cars and trophy wives do for men.

The narwhal lives exclusively in the Arctic Ocean.  So those California kids at the beach party in “Rock Lobster” didn’t really see one.

I was reminded of "Rock Lobster" recently when I rode the bike trail that goes from the Cape Cod National Seashore visitor center to Coast Guard Beach.

The beachgoers were bakin' in the sun that day -- you could smell the tanning butter -- but no one seemed to be fruggin', and I didn't see any matching towels.

Coast Guard Beach, Cape Cod

The signboard at the beach was welcoming, but I wondered why the tip of the day was "Stay close to shore."

Then I saw this sign, which provided the explanation for the "Stay close to shore" tip:

I've never run into a shark at the beach.  But I've had several scary encounters with bikini whales.

One final note on the B-52’s.  The band’s name refers to their beehive hairdos.

"Beehive" is used to describe that kind of hair style not only because it resembles a bee's nest, but also because it resembles the nose cone of the American B-52 bomber.

Here’s “Rock Lobster”:

Click here to buy the song from Amazon:

Loretta Lynn -- "The Pill" (1975)

I'm tearin' down your brooder house

'Cause now I've got the pill!

Only two months until election day -- this campaign's been so much fun that I hate to see it end!  I bet you feel the same way!

There's been a lot of talk about a "gender gap" in this campaign.  The polls consistently show that the majority of male voters favor Mitt Romney while the majority of females favor Barack Obama.  

But the real gap isn't so much male vs. female as it is married vs. single.  A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that married men favor Romney by 59% to 35%, while married women favor the GOP nominee by 55% to 40%.  Unmarried men favor Obama 51% to 41%, while unmarried women favor the incumbent by 57% to 32%.

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in 1920, guaranteed American women the right to vote.  But many states had previously allowed women to vote.  For example, Wyoming's first territorial legislature granted female suffrage in 1869, and became the first state to allow women to vote when it was admitted to the union in 1890.  

And the Utah Territory gave women the right to vote in 1870, long before the LDS church disavowed polygamy.  (Non-Mormons in the state supported women's suffrage because they thought women would vote to support the legal abolition of polygamy.  Mormons supported women's suffrage because they wanted to counter the popular image that Mormon women were mistreated and exploited by their polygamous husbands.) 

Generally speaking, states west of the Mississippi were way ahead of those east of the Mississippi when it came to giving women the vote.

Here's a map illustrating women's suffrage in 1915.  The green states allowed women to vote in all elections.  The yellow states allowed women to vote for president.  The blue states allowed women to vote in party primaries.  The red states -- including all the original 13 states except for New York -- did not allow women to vote at all.

Most of the men who opposed female suffrage did so because they opposed prohibition, and many more women than men supported prohibition.  Those men didn't really care if women could vote or not.  They did care about whether they could continue to get whiskey and beer at the neighborhood saloon.

If women of childbearing age had to choose between the right to vote or the pill, which do you think they would pick?  I wouldn't be surprised if the majority chose the pill.

The pill had a dramatic effect on the lives of young women.  It had a dramatic effect on the lives of young men, too.

The oral contraceptive pill was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960, but was not legal for married and unmarried women to use in all states until 1972, when the Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried women.

Enovid -- the original oral contraceptive

Loretta Lynn, who was born in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, in 1932, was married when she was 15 years old and bore four children before she turned 21.  She released a number of records that speak to women who (like Lynn herself) grew up poor in rural areas, married young, and spent their twenties and thirties barefoot and pregnant.  

But her heroines are usually what Lynn's website calls "take-no-crap women" who take no crap from their all-too-often hard-drinking and philandering husbands (not to mention the tawdry sluts with whom they philander).

A very young Loretta Lynn

Her 1971 hit, "One's on the Way," contrasts the comings and goings of rich celebrity gals to the everyday life of a working-class Topeka housewife:

They say to have her hair done 
Liz flies all the way to France
And Jackie's seen in a discotheque 
Doin' a brand new dance
And the White House social season 
Should be glittering and gay
But here in Topeka, the rain is a-fallin'
The faucet is a-drippin' and the kids are a-bawlin'
One of them is toddlin' and one is a-crawlin' and

One's on the way

The narrator notes that "the pill may change the world tomorrow," but she herself obviously isn't on it.  As the song ends, she reiterates that she's pregnant yet again ("one's on the way"), and then exclaims, "Oh gee, I hope it ain't twins again."  (Lynn's youngest two children were twin girls.)

Here's a video of Loretta Lynn singing "One's on the Way" on a Muppets TV special:

By 1975, it would seem that our Topeka housewife has had a change of heart.  In "The Pill" -- which was recorded in 1972, but not released until 1975 because of its controversial subject matter -- the song's heroine takes advantage of the availability of reliable and convenient birth control to level the playing field with her playboy husband.

All these years I've stayed at home

While you had all your fun

And every year that's gone by

Another baby's come

There's gonna be some changes made

Right here on nursery hill

You've set this chicken your last time

'Cause now I've got the pill

The narrator has decided it's time to kick up her heels and make up for all those years she was tied down by her children:

This old maternity dress I've got

Is goin' in the garbage

The clothes I'm wearin' from now on

Won't take up so much yardage

Miniskirts, hot pants, 

And a few little fancy frills

I'm makin' up for all those years

Since I've got the pill

The songwriters of "The Pill" compare the constantly pregnant narrator to a broody hen, whose only function is to lay eggs and hatch chicks.  The song is full of poultry-related terms.  For example, the lines quoted at the beginning of the post refer to a "brooder house," which is a structure where young chicks are raised.  (I appreciate all the poultry references because some of my Arkansas aunts and uncles and cousins raised chickens when I was a kid, and I vividly remember my occasional visits to their chicken farms.)

A broody hen will roost on just about anything

Of course, it takes two to tango, and one reason that the singer of "The Pill" is constantly pregnant is that she likes having sex.  Now she can truly enjoy sex as often as she wants -- with her husband, or perhaps with someone else -- without having to worry about becoming pregnant as a result.

This incubator is overused

Because you've kept it filled

The feelin' good comes easy now

Since I've got the pill

"The Pill" climbed higher on the pop charts than any of Lynn's previous singles, but it made it only to #5 on the country charts -- which is bad only in comparison with the string of very successful singles that preceded it.  ("One's on the Way" was a #1 hit, and each of the seven singles Lynn released immediately prior to "The Pill" rose higher than #5.)  That's because a fair number of radio stations refused to air the record.

One of the stations that did not refuse to air "The Pill" was WHRB, the Harvard University radio station.  When I was a law student, I listened regularly to "Hillbilly at Harvard," a Saturday program that featured traditional country and bluegrass music.  (The show's slogan was "Country Music for Eastern New England," which was certainly accurate.  In those days, the next-closest country station was probably at least 500 miles away.)

One final note on the significance of "The Pill": Lynn once said in an interview that a number of country doctors had told her that her record had done more to promote birth control in rural areas than anything else.

Loretta Lynn in 2010

So who is Loretta Lynn voting for this year?  As far as I know, she hasn't said.  I'm guessing she'd go with the Republicans.  She has been close to the Bush family for a long time, and she's defended Sarah Palin: "I like her.  She's a good woman . . . . It makes me mad that they all put her down.  She's smarter than all of them and they put her down."  

And despite controversial songs like "The Pill," Lynn sounds like a cultural conservative.  She calls herself "an old Bible girl," and has a traditional view of marriage: "God said you need to be a woman and a man."

On the other hand, she is unhappy that the government isn't doing more to help the poor.  "I'd quit sending all this money overseas and try to help my people here," she said recently.  "Quit letting somebody borrow money that's already rich, help the poor out."  

Here's "The Pill":

Click below to order this song from Amazon.

Aztec Two-Step -- "The Persecution and Restoration of Dean Moriarty (On The Road)" (1972)

He was born on the road in the month of July

And he’ll live on the road ‘til he sees fit to die

'Cause he learned on the road how humanity cries

Today is the 55th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the quintessential literary work of the "Beat Generation."

The first edition

After several false starts, Kerouac wrote a draft of On the Road in three weeks in 1951.  He typed the book on to a 120-foot scroll of teletype paper, which still exists.  I'm not sure why it took him six years to get it published.

Jim Irsay, the owner of the NFL's Indianapolis Colts bought the scroll in 2001 for $2.4 million, and it has been exhibited in a number of museums and libraries.  Click here to read a Boston Globe story about the scroll.

Jim Irsay with the On the Road scroll

The two main characters in On the Road are Sal Paradise, who is based on the author, and his friend and traveling companion, Dean Moriarty, who is based on "Beat" icon Neal Cassady.

Cassady's mother died when he was ten, and he was raised by his alcoholic father, who lived on Denver's skid row.  As a teenager, Cassady was arrested a number of times.  His earliest run-in with the law took place when he was nabbed for car theft when he was only 14.  Shortly after turning 18, he was convicted of receiving stolen property and spent almost a year in prison.

After his release from prison in 1948, he married a 15-year-old girl.  The couple moved to New York City, where Cassady met Kerouac and poet Allen Ginsberg.

Shortly thereafter, Cassady got his marriage annulled so he could marry another woman.  He and his new wife moved to California and had three children.  A couple of years later, Cassady committed bigamy by marrying another woman, with whom he had a son.

Ginsberg and Cassady

Cassady was also involved in a homosexual relationship with Allen Ginsberg, which lasted off and on for about 20 years.

In 1958, Cassady was convicted of marijuana possession and incarcerated at San Quentin.  After his release in 1960, his wife divorced him.  In 1964, he hooked up with Ken Kesey and his "Merry Pranksters," driving their bus on the cross-country trip that was the subject of Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. 

Here's some video of the Cassady of that era:

In 1968, Cassady went to Mexico to attend a wedding party, where he took some Seconal (a barbiturate) and probably had a drink or two.  He then decided to walk to the next town along some railroad tracks, but passed out in the middle of the night.  He was found lying next to the tracks in a coma the next morning, and died in a local hospital a few hours later.  Cassady was only 42.  (Kerouac died a year later at age 47.)

Cassady and Kerouac

Cassady wrote some poetry and an autobiographical novel, but his real literary significance derived from the fact that he was Kerouac's muse.  Characters based on Cassady appear not only in On the Road, but also in several other Kerouac novels.  Cassady is credited with helping Kerouac move away from a traditional, sentimental writing style and develop the stream-of-consciousness style he used in On the Road.  

Cassady is mentioned in Ginsberg's poetry, and he may have been the inspiration for the main character in Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  There have been several movies in which he is a character, and he is referenced in songs by the Grateful Dead, Doobie Brothers, King Crimson, and Tom Waits (among others).

Aztec Two-Step was formed in 1971 when Rex Fowler and Neal Shulman met during an open-mike night at a Boston coffeehouse.  They are still performing together, and have released 15 albums over the last 40 years.  (The group's name is taken from a poem by another major "Beat" writer, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.)

This song captures the essence of the Dean Moriarty character, portraying him as a man-child who is charismatic but more than a little crazy.  Most of all, he is free -- which makes him scary to a lot of people:

One look in his eyes and you know he’s unsound

There’s no way to faze him he’s nobody’s clown

He’s as deep as the sea and he’s equally free

That’s why I fear him, and hate him, 
And wish he were down

The song closes with these lines:

He’s like the setting sun’s hues, 

Or the dust on his shoes

He’s living, he’s naughty, 

He’s Dean Moriarty

Here's "The Persecution and Restoration of Dean Moriarty (On the Road)":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Earth Opera -- "The Red Sox Are Winning" (1968)

And the weather is strange

No summer this year

In the days of the war

But the Red Sox are winning

If you're a regular reader of 2 or 3 lines, you can probably guess how this post is going to turn out.

For those of you who are new to my wildly popular blog and don't have a clue as to how this post will turn out, I'll tell you.  It's going to turn out to be a nasty rant about the Boston Red Sox, full of sarcasm and gloating and other very unattractive qualities.  (Teddy Roosevelt's daughter Alice famously said, "If you can't say something good about someone, come sit next to me."  I agree with Alice, especially if that someone is the Boston Red Sox.)

*     *     *     *     *

This is first and foremost a music blog, of course, so I need to spend a little time discussing Earth Opera and their song.  After I get that out of the way, I can concentrate on trashing the Red Sox.

Earth Opera was the brainchild of two folk/bluegrass types, Peter Rowan and David Grisman.  

Rowan was a guitarist who grew up in Boston and became a bluegrass enthusiast when he was a college student.  Somehow he ended up being hired as the guitarist and lead singer of bluegrass legend Bill Monroe's band.  

Grisman was a mandolin player who grew up in a Conservative Jewish family in Hackensack, New Jersey.  He was also a bluegrass fan -- he met Jerry Garcia at a Bill Monroe concert in 1964, and the two became close friends.

David Grisman (L) and Peter Rowan (R)

Earth Opera was the result of Rowan and Grisman meeting in Boston.  (I suspect they actually met in Cambridge.  Cambridge in general and Harvard Square in particular was full of nerds and boarding-school types playing blues, bluegrass, and other traditional music.  The whole scene was about as authentic as a three-dollar bill.)  

Earth Opera's music was either very eclectic or very confused, depending on your point of view.  Their albums are usually described as psychedelic, but they also had elements of rock, folk, jazz, and classical music. 

There were all kinds of mixed-up albums being released in 1968, when Earth Opera's eponymous debut album was issued by Elektra Records.  Rowan wrote the group's songs -- his lyrics could be just a tad pseudo-intellectual at times.

The Earth Opera album cover

*     *     *     *     *

"The Red Sox Are Winning" is essentially an antiwar song.  Like most 1968-era hippie musicians, Rowan was no sports fan.  His mention of the Red Sox is ironic.  Here's a rough translation of what the song is really saying: "We're fighting an unjust war in Vietnam and the world in general is going to hell in a hand basket -- but the Red Sox are winning, so most of you people don't give a damn."

The Red Sox were winning when this song was recorded.  In 1965 and 1966, the Red Sox had finished in 9th place in the 10-team American League.  But the 1967 "Impossible Dream" team came out of nowhere to win the AL pennant on the final day of the regular season.

Naturally, they lost the World Series in heartbreaking fashion that year.  Losing in heartbreaking fashion is what the Red Sox do, after all.  They don't lose all the time like the hapless Cubs -- they mostly lose when they are supposed to win . . . when they are just a whisker away from winning . . . when losing really, really hurts.  (What's that you say about 2004 and 2007?  I couldn't hear you.)

One of the highlights of my annual trip to Cape Cod in August was that I could listen every day to the Boston sports-talk radio station as the 2011 Red Sox were self-destructing in a truly spectacular way.  It was such an unanticipated delight -- I never saw anything this juicy coming.

Perhaps I should have.  After all, last season's team was nine games up on the Tampa Bay Rays in the race for the American League wild-card spot with only 24 games left to play.  

But they gagged down the stretch like few teams had gagged before, losing 18 of their final 24 games.  That's a collapse that's impressive even by the high standards of this organization, which has set the bar pretty darned high.

And it was even worse than you realize.  On the final day of the 2011 season, the Rays trailed 7-0 in the 8th inning of a game they had to win to have a chance of catching the Red Sox and getting into the playoffs.  They scored six runs in the 8th, but were still losing by a run in the 9th with two outs and two strikes on a pinch hitter who was hitting a ghastly .108 for the season.  Naturally, he hit a home run -- and the Rays eventually won in the 12th.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox had a lead in the 9th over the Orioles with Jonathan Papelbon, their best relief pitcher, on the mound and the Orioles down to their very last strike.  Yes, the Orioles somehow rallied to win off Papelbon.  (It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.)

Papelbon after blowing the save
and the 2011 season

What were the chances of the Red Sox blowing a nine-game lead with 24 games left, the Rays winning a game when they were down 7-0 in the 8th and down to their last strike in the 9th, and the Red Sox losing when they were ahead in the 9th and their opponents were down to their last strike?  One statistician has estimated the odds of things turning out the way they did at one in 278 million.  (Anyone who doesn't believe in God had better start rethinking his or her position because there is simply no way that all that happened without a higher power pulling some strings.)

*     *     *     *     *

The aftereffects of the shocking collapse of the 2011 "beer-and-fried-chicken" Red Sox (so-called because it was later revealed that the team's starting pitchers spent their off days eating Popeye's, drinking beer, and playing video games in the clubhouse) carried over into the 2012 season: the Red Sox got off to a 1-5 start.

"The Official Fried Chicken
of the 2011 Boston Red Sox"

April 20 was the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park, the oldest baseball stadium in the country, but the gala celebration was ruined when the big bad Yankees beat the Old Towne Team.  (That's not exactly a man-bites-dog story, is it?)

By the way, the team used the 100th anniversary celebration to announce that fans could now buy personalized commemorative bricks that would be placed inside the stadium.  I guess it's not enough that the Red Sox already have the highest average ticket prices in the major leagues -- the owners need to gouge their fans for an extra $250 (for a small brick) or $475 (for a larger one).

There IS a sucker born every minute!

Here's the brick that the local PETA chapter purchased to publicize its efforts to halt the barbaric practice of boiling lobsters alive and eating them.  The initial letters of the words in the message on this brick -- which reads like it was written by someone who spoke English as a second (or third) language and had never seen a baseball game -- spell "lobster liberation."

Anyhow, things went from bad to worse for the poor Red Sox and their fans the next day, when the Yankees erased a 9-0 deficit by scoring a run in the 6th, seven runs in the 7th, and seven more runs in the 8th.  It may have been the worst Red Sox el foldo against the Yankees ever, and that's saying something.

*     *     *     *     *

In May, star pitcher Josh Beckett skipped a start due to a sore shoulder.  The day after the team announced Beckett would miss a start, he played 36 holes of golf.  When the local press sniffed this out and grilled him about it after he pooped his pants in his next start -- he left in the 3rd inning after surrendering seven runs -- Beckett (who had been given a four-year, $68 million contract extension in 2010) responded by saying that his golf outing took place on an off day, and it was no one's business what he did on his off days.

Beckett's partner on the links that day was fellow pitcher Clay Buchholz, who infamously broke into his middle school while home from college for Christmas a few years ago and stole 29 laptop computers to sell on eBay.  His daddy was a local big shot and Clay was a big sports star, so he skated on the bungled burglary.

Here's a picture of Buchholz's wife.  He apparently used spent of that laptop money on engagement implants:

Mrs. Clay Buchholz

*     *     *     *     *

The Sox worked their way up to three games over .500 by June 2, but things went south after that.  By the time I got to the Cape, they had a losing record and were a distant 4th in the AL East -- their chances of sneaking into even the 2nd wild-card spot were all but nil.

And then things blew up completely.

Hiring Valentine as Red Sox manager
seemed like a good idea at the time

The Red Sox had hired the volatile and voluble Bobby Valentine as manager after the wheels came off at the end of the 2011 season.  Valentine immediately got on the wrong side of his veteran players by questioning the motivation and desire of veteran infielder Kevin Youkilis (who was later given away to the White Sox).  

Kevin "What, Me Worry?" Youkilis

In July, star slugger Adrian Gonzalez -- who had signed a seven-year, $154 million contract in April 2011 -- sent a text message to the team's ownership, asking for a meeting.  A couple of weeks later, a writer for Yahoo Sports reported that most of the team's players attended the meeting, the purpose of which was to bitch about their manager and ask the higher-ups to fire his sorry ass.

Click here to read the Yahoo story.

All hell broke lose in Boston when that story came out.  The first casualty was backup catcher Kelly Shoppach, who was quickly traded to the Mets.  It was subsequently reported that Shoppach had written the text message asking for the meeting, but sent it from Gonzalez's phone (with his permission) because Gonzalez was a big star whose opinion would be taken more seriously by ownership.

McKayla is not impressed by the Red Sox backstabbers

Shortly thereafter, the pitching coach was fired.  It was speculated that he was given the boot because he was the "rat" who had talked to the Yahoo reporter.  (The Yahoo writer had covered the Royals for the Kansas City newspaper when the pitching coach had worked for the Royals, so it was presumed they were old buddies.)  That may have been true, but the team's pitching performance was so lackluster that there was plenty of cause to give the coach a pink slip.

A few days later, the Red Sox announced that Carl Crawford -- a starting outfielder who had been given  a seven-year, $142 million contract to join Boston as a free agent prior to the 2011 season -- would have season-ending elbow surgery.  Crawford could have continued to play with the injury, but going under the knife in August instead of October, he hoped to be ready to play by Opening Day of 2013 instead of missing a month or two of that season.  This was widely (and correctly) viewed as the equivalent of the Red Sox running up a white flag and writing off the 2012 season with six weeks left.

Then came the final straw.  

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On August 13, 92-year-old Red Sox legend Johnny Pesky died.  Pesky was greatly beloved by all Red Sox fans, young and old.  He had a long association with the team as player, coach, manager, and broadcaster, and was one of only six Red Sox players to have had his number retired by the team.  (All the others were Hall of Famers.)

Pesky's funeral was held the following Monday.  Exactly four current Red Sox players showed up for the service -- even though the team had chartered a bus to drive everyone to the funeral.  

That night, Josh Beckett hosted a bowling party to raise money for his charitable foundation.  Most of his teammates came out to bowl and then headed to the House of Blues for some music and perhaps a cocktail or two (or ten or twelve).

Once that news got out, the phone lines of the sports-talk station were flooded with calls from angry fans who wanted to tear the players a new one for dissing Johnny Pesky and then going out to whoop it up at Beckett's party.

I was driving back home that morning and listened in awe until I was out of range of the radio station's signal.  You have never heard such venom -- and from people who mostly claimed to be life-long fans of the team whose players, manager, and owners they were verbally crucifying.  I could have listened to that all day.

A few days later, the other three shoes dropped.  The aforementioned Beckett, Gonzalez, and Crawford -- all three had been All-Stars in either 2010, 2011, or both, so we're not talking about chopped liver here -- were traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for some minor-leaguers and the Dodgers' willingness to take on the trio's bloated salaries.  (The three stars' contracts had a total value of $364 million.)  

I can't say for sure that there's not a single Red Sox fan who wasn't thrilled to get rid of them, but I have yet to find one willing to say he or she was sorry to see them go.

*     *     *     *     *

ESPN's Bill Simmons -- he's a diehard Red Sox fan -- had this to say about the whole mess:

I wanted to name our newborn son "Beckett" right after the Red Sox won the 2007 World Series.  If not for a reader intervening, my son might be named Beckett Simmons right now.  We could start there.

The Red Sox have trotted out eight "superstar" hitters in my lifetime: Carl Yastrzemski, Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Mo Vaughn, Nomar Garciaparra, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez and Adrian Gonzalez.  The first seven guys played a combined 83 seasons in Boston.  Gonzalez lasted 21 months.  We could start there.

My favorite baseball team just traded its best offensive player and a proven playoff starter in a massive salary dump that had no correlation to anything that's ever happened in Red Sox history except for . . . you know . . . the time we sold Babe Ruth.  Somehow, Red Sox fans are delighted about the trade. We could start there.

Simmons eventually concludes that the Red Sox were actually bailed out by the Dodgers, and will be better off for jettisoning Crawford, Gonzalez, and Beckett.  He's convinced the team has hit bottom, and has nowhere to go but up.

He's probably right about the hitting bottom part.  And it's true that when you hit bottom, you have nowhere to go but up.  But sometimes the bottom is a very long way down indeed -- meaning there's a very long way to go to get back to the top.  

The Red Sox clearly are either at the bottom or much closer to it than they have been for years.  They are completely irrelevant this year and will continue to be completely irrelevant for some time to come.  Except for the colors of their uniforms, you'd be hard pressed to tell the Red Sox from the Kansas City Royals.

As a Yankees fan, I couldn't be more delighted.  Now I know how Ronald Reagan felt after the Soviet Union fell apart.  

The Yankees don't win every year, and the Yankees make their share of mistakes.  But you'll never see the Yankees experience a clusterf*ck like the one the Red Sox are going through.  And it's impossible to imagine the Yankees just throwing in the towel like the Red Sox have just done.  (A team captained by Derek Jeter, writing off a season before the last game has been played?  That's unthinkable.)

Click here to listen to "The Red Sox Are Winning."

Click here if you'd like to buy that recording from Amazon.