An attack of the 'warm and fuzzies' authored by the Boston Red Sox

           It’s hard to assess the true nature of the events that transpired prior to the start of yesterday’s pre-season game against the Toronto Blue Jays, because we weren’t there. What we heard was that prior to the game, Boston Red Sox players voted unanimously not to play the game or board a plane to Japan for scheduled exhibition games against Japanese teams and two regular season games against the Oakland A’s, unless the team’s coaches were compensated for the trip.

           As it was told in countless reports (Sports Illustrated and NESN, among others), it came across as a strong case of the ‘warm and fuzzies.’

           The Toronto Sun even used the words – “You get a warm and fuzzy feeling over the fact that 25 players who will earn a combined $146 million this season alone, would stand united over $500,000 worth of chump change, not for them, but for others.”

“The coaches are a huge part of our success,” said Red Sox union rep, Kevin Youkilis. “It’s something as players that we feel strongly about.”

Call me a cynic, and though as a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan, I’m quite willing to believe that my team would be as self-sacrificing as the reports would seem to indicate, I have to think that there was more to this than was visible to the ‘naked eye.’

What could it be? Did one of the trainers threaten to put cockroaches in someone’s glove before every regular season game? Did the coaches threaten to reveal clubhouse secrets that would ruin player reputations? Is one of the players having a secret affair with one of the support personnel?

Perhaps my suspicions say more about me than they do about the players. Why is it so difficult to believe that a group of (arguably) over-paid athletes on a professional baseball team would unite over something that had nothing to do with putting the roof over their private heads? Why does it feel as incongruous as a story that Donald Trump had patched things up with Rosie O’Donnell?

I think it’s because we’ve come to believe the worst about baseball players in general. From steroids to ridiculous contract demands to plain and simple posturing, previous behavior has led us to believe that this particular group of male individuals is essentially flawed in ways with which we do not identify – greedy, self-serving, coddled and over-priviliged.

And yet, there they were, with Kevin Youkilis as their spokesman, uniting unanimously to do something un-greedy, self-sacrificing and indicative of behavior we would generally like to be associated with.

The Oakland Athletics were quick to jump onto the ‘gesture’ bandwagon and before you could say ‘warm and fuzzy,’ both teams were refusing to play in Japan (which could have caused some serious issues, since the league’s collective bargaining agreement stipulates that players can not refuse to play a regular season game).

I’ll head out on a limb here and suggest that what the Boston Red Sox did has implications that stretch beyond the circumstances. It might, in fact, cause a huge contingent of bruised and battered fans to reassess these guys in a way that can only benefit the sport of major league baseball. If it makes just one person (me, perhaps) think twice before automatically labeling ballplayers as undesireable representatives of the human condition, then the Boston Red Sox have accomplished something that 26 championships in New York has never done.