Which homegrown Red Sox player do you wish had never played for another team?
Debate the answer with Chad Finn and Boston sports fans at The Sports Q.
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Your comment in [Thursday’s Q] about how Carlton Fisk had played more seasons for the White Sox floored me. I had no idea he was there 13 years. It seems so wrong when a Boston sports legend can be claimed by another city as well, and don’t even tell me Adam Vinatieri has been with the Colts longer than the Patriots even though I know it’s true. So my question to you and the readers is: Which homegrown Red Sox player (let’s keep it to Red Sox) do you wish had never played for another team? For me, it’s Fisk. Thanks for the reminder. – Tom P.
Does Babe Ruth count? I’m pretty sure he never spent a summer on the Pawtucket shuttle (was Rhode Island even a state then?), but he counts as home grown, right? For all practical reasons he’d have to be the choice. Even if they’d kept him as a pitcher.
From the visceral perspective of being a fan though, for me it would have to be one of the moves during roughly a month-long stretch in December 1980-January 1981, when Red Sox owner/GM Haywood “Did I mention my boy Marc can catch a little?” Sullivan took it upon himself to cease paying a core of Red Sox stars while simultaneously attempting to gut my childhood. Here are the three deals, all of which stink, stank and stunk:
December 10: Traded 3B Butch Hobson and SS Rick Burleson to the Angels for 3B Carney Lansford, CF Rick Miller, and RHP Mark Clear.
January 8: C Carlton Fisk signed with the White Sox as a free-agent. (He became a free-agent because Sullivan “forgot” to mail him his contract by the deadline.)
January 23: Traded CF Fred Lynn and RHP Steve Renko to the Angels for LHP Frank Tanana, LF Joe Rudi, and RHP Jim Dorsey.
Ugh. Sullivan was the GM equivalent of what his son was as a catcher. (For perspective, his son hit .186 with a .494 OPS in 360 at-bats for the Red Sox from 1982-87. Fisk had a slightly better run during that span for the White Sox.)
Hobson was my favorite player as a kid, and that wasn’t a terrible deal, though they had Lansford, who won the ’81 batting title, for just two years. Lynn was my second-favorite player as a kid, and he NEVER should have left. For his career, he slashed .347/.420/.601 in 1,833 plate appearances at Fenway. He’d be in Cooperstown had he been a Red Sox lifer, something he cheerily acknowledges himself.
But my choice is Fisk. As a native New Englander, he was literally home grown. Plus, after yesterday’s Fisk-Jason Varitek debate, it’s pretty clear that there’s a generation of Red Sox fans who have no idea how good he was. All of Varitek’s strengths and reasons to be admired were his too. And he was a far better player.
Also, don’t sleep on Dwight Evans’s weird final season in Orioles orange. That never should have happened. And I’d be interested in visiting an alternate universe in which Nomar Garciaparra never got injured or grew bitter and instead spent an entire 20-year-career here, front-and-center of course when they overcame the Yankees in 2004. Take that, Jeter.
Well, that was longer than I expected. Guess I’m still bitter about the Idiotic Dismantling of 1980-81. Who do you have? Which homegrown player do you wish had spent his full career with the Red Sox? Take a few hacks in the comments, and this hack will meet you there.
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