The Red Sox As The Soviet Union

Nicholas Thompson:

Leaving moral and political issues aside—this isn’t about right or wrong, but about models of disintegration—and admitting that the stakes of the great Pedro versus Clemens battles were lower than those between Khrushchev and Kennedy, the Red Sox of 2012 are, in fact, quite a bit like the U.S.S.R. in 1989. They tried to keep up financially, and intellectually, with their rival for many years. Glasnost has passed; the end is here. Ben Cherrington, the new general manager of the Red Sox, to stretch the analogy, is Gorbachev. He started in the job this year, and tried to clean up the mess. But he was stymied by the old guard—including owners who foisted the current, and awful, manager, Bobby Valentine—on him, and now he has to move drastically. Crawford is like Kazakhstan, expensive but troubled; Beckett is Georgia, valuable but liable to start a war; Nick Punto, the throw-in utility infielder is Moldova; Gonzalez, the valuable breadbasket, is the Ukraine. And John Lackey, the grumpy pitcher who stays behind, is now Chechnya. Historians will debate who ruined the wonderful Red Sox of the past decade: was it the general manager, Theo Epstein, who fled last fall? Was it Beckett, the main perpetrator of the beer-and-chicken shenanigans? Did Johnny Damon, the charismatic center fielder, who departed for the Yankees, leave a curse? Some people would pick Bobby Valentine—but to me, he’s just Yeltsin, the disruptive, late arrival. The man who really did it is Brian Cashman, the canny general manager of the Yankees (and the most aptly named man in sports, besides Lance Armstrong). He is Ronald Reagan: the man who kept spending and spending, driving the Red Sox into delirium and then oblivion.

That is a funny and apt comparison, but I will always see the Yankees as the evil empire.  To me, the Red Sox and the Yankees are more like Iran and Iraq, two combatants who I feel each should lose.  But honestly, what were the Red Sox thinking bringing Bobby Valentine in to manage?  I don't get that at all.