Boston Globe sports photographer Stan Grossfeld spent a day in Fort Myers recently with Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom, tagging along from his early morning run through his late-night sip of bourbon.
Bloom comes across as humble and self-aware, mentioning multiple times that he doesn’t begrudge fans for their unhappiness over two last-place finishes in three years. “Yes, that’s not what any of us wants to bring our fans,” he said. “We did not give them what they deserved in 2022, plain and simple.”
It’s not an exaggeration to say Bloom might be the most hated person in Boston. He’s a frequent punching bag on talk radio and online, where fans and commentators deride him as cheap and emotionally detached. The Globe reports that Bloom has even received “rare” death threats, and been called an antisemitic slur.
Though Bloom doesn’t expound on those specific episodes, he assures fans he also “suffers” when the Red Sox lose.
But Bloom also defends himself a little bit. He tells Grossfeld that some media members admit to him they’re just exaggerating when they call for his dismissal or rip his job performance.
“I’ve also had a lot of people who write and say that stuff on the radio who will privately disavow it and tell me they’re performing, so I don’t take any of it personally,” he said. “We sucked, so of course they’re pissed like they should be … When I was a kid [in the Philadelphia suburbs] and things weren’t going right, I booed.”
Given that Red Sox principal owner John Henry also owns the Globe, it’s easy to dismiss the Bloom profile as a PR-induced puff piece. Certainly, the story contains a lot of flattery. Grossfeld’s description of Bloom opening up his bourbon bottle at the end of the night reads like a piece of erotic fan-fiction.
“Exhausted, he cracks open the bottle of WhistlePig PiggyBack bourbon and sinks into a lounge chair by the pool. It’s finally cooled off and a few sips of bourbon go down smoothly,” Grossfeld writes.
If only Bloom’s tenure with the Red Sox could be as smooth as a shot of PiggyBack bourbon.
