The return of John Farrell
This is baseball. Pitch to pitch. At-bat to at-bat. Game to game. And, in the Red Sox current case, series to series.
Things change. And, boy, for anybody who wants a reminder of that just juxtapose the vibes emanating from this team when it left St. Petersburg, Fla. Thursday night and what took place at Fenway Park Sunday afternoon.
As bad as it was three days before, it was equally as good for Red Sox fans one day before Patriot's Day.
Part of it was that that team that looked like the worst of the worst against the Rays have now won three straight games and are sitting at .500. That was due to the Red Sox' 2-1 win over the Angels that was punctuated with the retiring of Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani.
At this moment, the Red Sox are one game out of the Wild Card race. And even with all their flaws and injuries, that suggests there might be some hope, after all.
"It’s baseball. There's a lot of ups and downs," said Justin Turner, whose two-run homer was all the offense the Red Sox would need. "It's a long season. You're gonna go through a lot of stuff but the important thing is no matter what happens at the end of every day you forget about it and you show up the next day and try to figure out how to win a baseball game."
And on top of the win, an important dose of optimism could be found in the form of starting pitcher Garrett Whitlock, who became the first Red Sox' starter this season to record an out in the sixth inning. The idea that he would become a lock-down starting pitcher gained momentum thanks to seven innings in which he allowed just one run on three hits.
Then there was manner in which this game was consumed. One hour and fifty-seven minutes. That's how long it took. Boom, boom and boom. A nice little afternoon of crisp, clean baseball, just like the Commissioner's Office drew it up.
"It feels awesome. I love it," Turner said. "Don’t blink or you’re gonna miss something. Again, tip of the hat to Whit for going out and pounding the zone and working fast. Defense plays well when guys work fast and are pounding the zone and not pounding the zone. I’ll take the 1:57’s all day."
Then there was what littered the field even before the Red Sox win.
As former Red Sox manager John Farrell noted while standing on the field he spent so many games residing over, "Just a great group of guys that cared about one another and sacrificed for one another. In every sense of the word, that was a team." That "group" of course, was the collection of characters who joined their families in catching up in and around a round of kid-centric batting practice.
The likes of David Ortiz, Jon Lester, John Lackey, Dustin Pedroia, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Jonny Gomes, Will Middlebrooks, Stephen Drew, Andrew Miller, Craig Breslow, Franklin Morales, Mike Carp, Shane Victorino and Jacoby Ellsbury all brought back memories of how good it can be.
When it comes to reclaiming the vibes of a team that an entire city can get behind, it would be tough to find a more fitting collection than the one rolled out for the Fenway faithful early Sunday afternoon.
"The fans here are the greatest," Ortiz said. "I’ve never stopped saying that. The fans were always get the best out of us. In real life, you always want to have that coach, that person, who gets the best out of you. That’s why New England to me that I played here. This city got the best out of me. Some players, they don’t know how to put up with that. But I got the memo when I got here. Watching this city bounce back from that bombing, it was surprising and it wasn’t. It was surprising because, back to the conversation, it’s real life. You’ve never put up with something like that before. Being able to regroup and do what we did, it's very special. And that's why I’m always going to embrace this city.”