Red Sox Retrospect 2010: Riding High

It would be easy to look back on the 2010 season & see only the low points. They come to mind in a steady stream, a demented parade, one after the other. Tending toward optimism most of the time, I would rather recall the fun, the joy, the pure awesome, if given the chance. Because really? There was so much to love about 2010.

I remember this time last year, wishing mightily that Mike Lowell would enter retirement in Boston whites with the roar of the Fenway crowd echoing in his ears. I couldn't have foretold it any more accurately.

I got to see my favorite starting pitcher in the All Star game and he had his name mentioned in association with the Cy Young Award. I have taken immense pleasure in watching the maturation of Jon Lester. I love his straight-faced concentration, his head-down trips from dugout to mound and back again, his silent execution of pitch after pitch. Even when he struggles, you can sense the fierce drive to win boiling beneath that stone-faced surface, willing himself to snap out of it. And the sunshine of his beaming smile, rare in its occurrence but no less filled with sheer joy.

I was pleasantly surprised by the switch that clicked on in Clay Buchholz. I don't know what happened between last season and the one that preceded it, but he went from one of the most frustrating pitchers to endure to one that I looked forward to with great anticipation. There is something to be said for watching these green young boys come up from Pawtucket and Portland, wet behind the ears and wide-eyed, and become competitors filled with confidence and swagger. (Not too much swagger though.)

I remember hearing the names of players being invited to Ft Myers, names that were has-beens, and some, names I'd never heard at all. Scott Atchison was one of those names. He struck me immediately as a little bit awkward--the running joke at home, over the course of the season, was that he looked like he belonged more in an orange Home Depot apron than getting the ball handed to him in the late innings of a game--but less than a third of the season had passed before he was affectionately known as Atch (a "word" my cell phone recognizes & suggests while I type out texts to this day--it's amusing the "words" my phone "knows" now: YOOOOUK, Pedey, Tek) and outside of Daniel Bard, he became the safest face I would see peering out of the pen, waiting for the phone to ring.

There was my introduction to Ryan Kalish. He who appears to have Dirt Dog coursing naturally through his veins. I love his intensity. I love that he seems to be born of the same stuff as Youk & Pedey, a deep-seeded need to finish the game covered in dirt and grass stains and pine tar. I love that he throws himself headlong at the ball in play. I love that he looks like a puppy about to wag its tail clear off his backside just to be sitting on the bench as a Red Sock. His enthusiasm is contagious and I look forward to the day that he is permanently and officially a member of the big-league roster.

I got to see Tito show what he was made of. Sure, he came in here & gave us what we had been lacking for most of a century. He did it with the rag tag Idiots in 2004 and again with a somewhat more reserved team in 2007. But those seasons seemed to just unfold before our eyes like a dream. We clicked, and not only that, but we clicked on all cylinders, and the baseball gods smiled upon those seasons. 2010 did not play out to the same end nor with the same harmonious tune of those Championship years. Even though he was not awarded a plaque with the title, to me, he was Manager of the Year, navigating a sea of misfortune and orchestrating a lineup that seemed to be a new variation on a theme every night. And despite the speed bumps and the pot holes, this team never took a downward spiral into the abyss, even when it was clinging to the edge with its fingernails. They were close enough to taste contention.

Which brings me to the most amazing fact: somehow the 2010 Red Sox were not eliminated from the playoffs until the final week of the season. I am still not sure how that was possible, because it sure felt like the fates had been decided a long long time earlier. And yet there we were, in the fading weeks of 2010, praying for a miracle of numbers to nudge the Sox just a wee bit higher on the standings board.

Ultimately, the highest point of 2010 for me was the heart this team brought to the field. It didn't matter which names were penciled into the lineup, only to be scratched through and replaced with other names. It didn't matter what news fell on our apprehensive ears. It didn't matter how many teams they stared up at in the standings. None of it mattered. They came to play, as if every game was an elimination game. They played hard. They played hurt. They played until the schedule ran out. And I will never forget that about Red Sox 2010.