On Monday, Kevin Youkilis wrote the following in his blog on MLB.com:If you ask me what the key to this series was, it was just sticking together. There's a lot of people that are negative, and there's a lot of people that doubt us, and they want to get on the bandwagon and say we can't do it. You know what? We proved everyone wrong. We did it in 2004 and we did it again now. Maybe one of these days, people will start having a little more faith in us.
Huh? Did anyone get the license plate of the anti-Red Sox bandwagon, because I sure as heck haven't seen it. Who, exactly, did the Red Sox prove wrong this year? They were favored to win the division and go to the World Series by just about anyone who has an opinion about such things. Even when they were down 3-1 to the Indians, most people said that if the Tribe couldn't beat Beckett in game 5, they would be in serious trouble heading back to Fenway.
No one doubted Boston. There was no one to prove wrong. Everyone, to the extent they cared, had faith in the Red Sox. They are, and have been, since breaking training in late March, the dictionary definition of the favorite.
I am not and never have been an athlete, so I have no idea how they think, but based on Youk's comments here, and based on the sorry excuse for what passes for bulletin board material these days, I have to conclude that motivation is harder to come by than it used to be.
1 comment:
Apparently, the Red Sox have a strong desire...no, a NEED...to feel like the underdog. I could go off on a Red Sox bashing rant here (obviously, I'm a Yankee fan), but I won't. I'm just saying that it is interesting that they have that need.
What I also find interesting is that nearly everyone across baseball, from fans to MLB personnel, feel the need to foment this viewpoint. When you consider that most sportswriters, the bulk of the broadcasters and, apparently, many people in MLB management are obviously Red Sox fans, I just find it weird that anyone could reasonably state that the Sox are anything remotely close to being underdogs (even to the point where people spout off about how low their payroll is compared to the Yanks...what? when you count the Dice-K payoff to his Japanese team, they had a HIGHER payroll this year).
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