Seven years ago, this coming Tuesday, on January 28, 2012, my first Baseball World column appeared in this space. The headline on that column read ‘SOX FANS, FORGET THE COLLAPSE, THE NEW SEASON IS ALMOST HERE’.
The 2011 Red Sox, if you recall, had gone into the previous September with a seeming lock on the Playoffs. They were in first place, in the Eastern Division, at the start of play on September 1st, with a record of 83-52,11 games ahead of the second place Yankees and 9 ahead of the third place Rays.
Of course, as every Red Sox fan knows, they lost 20 of their last 27 games and finished in third place after being beaten on the last day of the season by the lowly Baltimore Orioles, who finished the season in last place, 28 games back, with a 69-93 record.
When the collapse was complete, Terry Francona was out of a job, amid rumors about fried chicken and beer in the clubhouse, and the Red Sox had hired Bobby Valentine to replace him. Valentine had been around baseball for a long time, both as a player and manager, and was expected to restore the Sox to their rightful place at the head of the Eastern Division.
As the Red Sox got ready to report for Spring Training with basically the same team that was the class of the East until September of the previous year, I put together the first Baseball World column.
I like to think of myself as a student of the game of baseball and a fairly intelligent person. I had spent a lot of time analyzing the Sox’ chances in the coming season and could see no reason why they would not do well.
In that first column, I wrote, among other things, that Bobby Valentine was ‘as knowledgeable a baseball man as there is’ and he ‘seems ready to take control on the field’. I closed the column saying ‘Red Sox fans have always said, ‘Wait until next year. Next year is almost here and it looks good right now’.
Reading that column this week, I had to question whether, as a ‘student of the game’, I had skipped too many classes or not paid close enough attention when in class and began to question my level of intelligence.
That ‘knowledgeable baseball man’ led the Red Sox right into the cellar with a record of 69 wins and 93 losses and a last place finish, 26 games behind the Division winning Yankees. The 2012 season may have looked good to me on January 28th, but I am sure that Red Sox fans did not agree that it ‘looked good’ at the end of the season.
After such an inauspicious start for Baseball World, I am surprised the paper is still publishing my columns seven years later. Of course, after finding what a horrible job I had done predicting that season, I decided to take a look at some of my later ‘prognostications’ to see how well I had done, staring with 2013.
We all know that Bobby Valentine and his ego were shown the door after that terrible season, never to be seen again on a baseball field.  Looking back, he was always a better dancer than a baseball player anyway.
The Sox then went out and brought John Farrell back from Toronto, where he had managed the Blue Jays for two years, after spending four years as the Red Sox pitching coach, to replace Valentine, not a hard act to follow.
Farrell had won 154 and lost 170, while managing Toronto, finishing in fourth place both years, not the best record ever by a new Manager, but not the worst either.
On February 9, 2013, in a column with the headline ‘Trying To Predict The American League East’, I noted that the Sox had added Johnny Gomes, Mike Napoli, Shane Victorino, Joel Hanrahan and Ryan Dempster to the roster. I also said that ‘if John Lester, Clay Buchholz, John Lackey, Felix Doubront and Dempster can pitch to the level they have shown they are capable of, the Red Sox can have a reasonable season’.
This supposedly intelligent man, self-proclaimed student of the game then went on to caution that Sox fans should not ‘look for a playoff spot this year’. I also said ‘I would pick the Yankees to beat out Toronto and Tampa Bay for the Division title with the Red Sox and Orioles trailing them.
The 2013 Red Sox apparently didn’t pay any more attention to my column than the 2012 Red Sox had, as they went out and won the American League East with a 97-65 record, finishing 5 games ahead of the second place Rays. They then beat the Rays in four games in the first round of the Playoffs, won the Division Championship Series against the Tigers in six games and won their third World Series of the century, beating the Cardinals in six games.
After seeing how badly I had called the first two races I wrote about, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and looked no further. Looking back, all I can say in my defense is something that I have said over and over in this column, it’s a long 162 game season and anything can happen.
If it’s any consolation and gives any relief to the Red Sox fans among my readers, rather than risk jinxing the current World Champions, I have made a New Year’s resolution not to predict a Sox repeat this year, at least that’s my resolution this week.