Awards, Wrapping Up Mitchell

Another award was handed out today for a Red Sox player. It’s no Cy Young, but reliever Hideki Okajima won MLB.com’s “This Year in Sports” Set-Up Pitcher of the Year. Considering the low expectations for Okajima coming out of spring training, it's not a bad deal.

Normally, this would be pretty cool, but it’s voted on by fans. Don’t take that wrong, it’s just that Sox pitchers dominated with Josh Beckett (best starter) Jonathan Papelbon (best closer) and Clay Buchholz (top performance) largely because the wide reach of the Sox fanbase. But congrats on a great year to Okajima. We’ll have to see if he can perform with expectation in’08. Nice minivan by the way.

With nothing really moving in any direction this off season, (or anymore "awards" to talk about) or the Santana trade talks moving forward there isn’t too much to write about when it comes to the Sox.

No major current players on the Sox current roster were implicated in the Mitchell Report, which is not too surprising considering the ties between the Sox and Mitchell himself.

I found the report to mostly laughable, if you didn’t think players took steroids or HGH in the past 10-15 years you need your eyes adjusted. The players listed were only on said list because trainers or clubhouse lackeys were forced to rat them out. I can’t say I blame them, when you have a former United States Senator breathing down your neck. You’d probably tell him you wear women’s panties if you were in that same position and if he pressured you enough.

Speaking of not placing blame, like many I don’t blame the players entirely for the scandal and situation at hand. Of course a certain amount of blame needs to be placed on the players themselves. However, when faced with a decision between personal accountability and putting food on the table, you can see why players who shouldn’t have been playing in the bigs in the first place stuck a needle in their arm to bolster their bank account by playing a few years for premium dough.

If this were a problem that baseball was serious about curbing, it would have been done without the aid of an independent study group, without the outcry of a public who didn’t mind 10 years ago and without the help of the United States Congress. So basically what I'm saying is that baseball whiffed on correcting it and players were mostly caught in the mania of trying to keep up with each other while we all sat in the stands and cheered for more home runs.

Personally, I don't need a score of 11-8 or even 7-5 every night to be satisfied with the game. Some of the most entertaining games I watched this year were decided by an outcome that resulted in both teams combining for less than 5 runs total. But since most people are lovin' the longball, it's hard for players to just say no. So thank you, dumbass fan, for spawning players like Sammy Sosa and Gary Sheffield. That's fucking great.