Red Sox fans shouldn’t lament letting Anthony Rizzo get away
Anthony Rizzo of the Chicago Cubs reacts after hitting a solo home run in the National League Division Series.
COMMENTARY
There was a time around here when we celebrated a championship won elsewhere. While longtime Bruins defenseman Ray Bourque was always worthy of a tip of the cap, the recollection of watching him raise a Stanley Cup won in Colorado on the steps of Boston City Hall is cringe-worthy in retrospect, even if the spirit of the salute came from a place of appreciation more than envy.
It’s been a long time since we feted an athlete whom we understood had to go elsewhere to win … or draped a participation banner from the rafters … or paid deep tribute to a team that lost its final game. We’ve been so fortunate as sports fans the last decade and a half – our four major professional sports teams have all won at least one title, and nine championships in total – that an 18-1 season is not just regarded as an epic disappointment, but was an epic disappointment. The 2007 Patriots weren’t quite perfect. But this generation in Boston sports has been closer to perfect than we’d ever have dared dream.
For the most part, New Englanders appreciate the good fortune of this extraordinary time, but with occasional exceptions, or at least reversions to old habits that never have entirely faded. Our sports hindsight, particularly when it comes to specific transactions more than specific games and teams, remains as sharp as Ted Williams’s eyesight in the summer of ’41.
Maybe it’s sportscaster Bob Lobel’s fault for deploying his familiar “Why can’t we get players like that?’’ lament every time a ballplayer who got away from Boston accomplished something of note elsewhere. (I feel like the catchphrase was most often applied to Jeff Bagwell, with justification.) It remains a reliable line, especially when offered in jest or with the acknowledgment that some all-time what-ifs have gone New England’s way over the last decade-plus, starting with the 199th pick in the 2000 NFL Draft.
It’s when the line does not come accompanied by a knowing wink and a nod, but rather is offered as a context-free complaint … well, that’s when it gets annoying. There are certainly enough prominent players with Red Sox ties in the 2015 MLB postseason to spur a long discussion about those who got away and some of former general manager Ben Cherington’s most disastrous decisions — hey, I wrote a screed about it the other day and didn’t even mention Yoenis Cespedes, who pulverized a baseball Tuesday night to the point that it looked like an exploding wad of talcum powder when it collided with his bat. Just imagine what he could do to a Rick Porcello fastball.
The combination of hindsight with revisionist history can be especially bothersome. That mix of memory and misplaced angst has been most applied to one particular player with Boston ties this postseason. Anthony Rizzo had two home runs during the Cubs’ series with the Cardinals, and he’s writing an enjoyable postscript to a season that saw him hit 31 home runs and drive in 101 runs with an .899 OPS and 78 walks. At 25 years old, he’s a cornerstone player on a Cubs roster that is stacked with young talent.
The Red Sox would love to have someone like him at first base right now – Rizzo is just eight months older than Travis Shaw – and so mentions of his name around here have increasingly come attached to that familiar lament. But it should not.
Much of what happened in the winter of 2010 with the Red Sox – trading Rizzo to San Diego in a blockbuster deal for Adrian Gonzalez, signing Carl Crawford, letting Adrian Beltre leave for Texas — looks regrettable now, five years later. Hell, Crawford has been regrettable for five years, and it would have been cool to retain Beltre, a future Hall of Famer who is as fun as he is talented, for more than a single season.
The revised we-shoulda-done-this, a half-decade later, is that the Red Sox should have kept Beltre, left Kevin Youkilis at first base, and never have traded for Gonzalez. It’s a hell of a daydream, but one that requires so much post-haste revision beyond what was possible and sensible at the time.
Gonzalez was a beast for the Padres, and given the choice over acquiring him or keeping Beltre, the vast majority of us would have chosen Gonzalez without a second thought. Youkilis had finished in the top six in MVP voting in 2008 and ’09 and was perceived to be a cornerstone; there was absolutely no thought to dealing him at the time. There’s also an assumption that Beltre had interest in staying in Boston. Accounts since have suggested he didn’t want to stay on the East Coast.
But the most egregious part of the revision is the implication that anyone among us knew the Red Sox should have kept Rizzo. He’d surpassed Lars Anderson by that point as the best first base prospect in the organization, having overcome non-Hodgkins lymphoma to hit 25 homers between Salem and Portland in 2010, but was still only regarded as the No. 75 prospect in the minors by Baseball America after that season.
He was no sure thing then, and he was no sure thing with the Padres, either. Rizzo hit .141 as a 21-year-old with the Padres in ’11, striking out 46 times in 128 at-bats. Jed Hoyer, who acquired him in San Diego and quickly brought him to the Cubs after reuniting with Theo Epstein in Chicago, acknowledged that Rizzo was probably rushed to the big leagues before his time.
“We believe Anthony has the potential to be a middle-of-the-order run producer for the Cubs for a very long time,’’ Hoyer said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “He still has some development left. We feel what he’s done at age 20 at Double-A and age 21 at Triple-A was remarkable.’’
Meanwhile, Gonzalez was very good here, leading the American League in hits (213) while ripping 45 doubles, 27 homers, driving in 117 runs, and slashing .338/.410/.548 with the ’11 Red Sox. He was an exceptional hitter, something that is largely forgotten because not many of those hits came during the Red Sox’ collapse that September and he gained a reputation as a clubhouse lawyer.
But even if you refuse to remember Gonzalez well as a hitter, the sliding doors effect of his acquisition must be considered. Had the Red Sox not acquired him – and then shipped him off to the Dodgers along with Crawford, Josh Beckett, and Nick Punto the following August – the Red Sox probably do not win the 2013 World Series.
Sure, Rizzo has become a terrific player for the Cubs. But it also took him a long time to become one of those players you and Lobel wish had never gotten away in the first place. We’d never have suffered the seasons of growing pains here.
Here’s to Rizzo winning a title with the Cubs, whose quest for a long-awaited championship was so familiar to us here, all those years ago, before we had parade after parade. Yes, it was a frustrating baseball season in these parts. But we’ve come so far from the days when we celebrated our former athletes’ victories elsewhere. There’s no need to revisit those days again. We have an abundance of good memories of our own to savor.
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