I for one am excited for the start of the new season. I'll miss JBJ catching everything in center (the pitchers will, too) and getting on a hot streak, just like I missed Mookie last year. Players leave all the time. Few retire with the team they start with, or even become identified with (like Pedro). It's a tough business, too much money involved for sentiment, sadly.
Anyway, I choose to enjoy who we have rather than being pissed about who's gone. After all, this isn't the incompetent Sox management of the 70s, losing Fisk and Lynn because they failed to meet contract deadlines. They've had to make tough choices, and I think they've done what they think is in the best long-term interest of the team.
Hell, I even watched or listened to most of the games last year. I love baseball. And since my son stopped playing, the Sox are all I've got. I watched Mike Kickham get shelled, and Robert Stock get shelled, and Jeff Springs get shelled, and Ryan Weber get shelled, and, well, a lot of guys got shelled. But Tanner Houck amazed, and Nick Pivetta looked ok, and Phillips Valdez was ok, and Dugie was fun to watch, and Dalbec came up and hit bombs to right-center when he wasn't striking out.
On the pitching side, this year we won't be seeing those guys who never should have been pitching in the big leagues, like Kickham. But you know what? Good for fucking Mike Kickham. He started a couple of big league ball games. He even got a W. He was mostly overmatched, but one day his stuff was good enough to survive. Good for him! That's the beauty of baseball -- on a special day a guy who shouldn't be there can put it together and walk away with a win. Makes me think about the guy who coaches for the travel team program my son used to play with. Local kid, pitched for a lower level D1 school, got drafted, made it to Double A. Great guy. Good person, works really well with the kids. I wish he'd had the chance Mike Kickham had, to get to The Show and for one game to have his stuff play up enough to walk off the mound with a W. To forever have an entry in the Baseball Encyclopedia with a mark in the win column.
But I digress. I'm ready to see OB and Jerry and Eck, to listen to Joe Castig, to be thrilled and bored and frustrated and astounded, for the automatic strike zone home plate robot umpire to bleat out "Play Ball" (well, maybe next year for that one), to see grown men play a kids game with incredible skill. I'm ready for baseball. I'm ready for Red Sox baseball. It's a new season; anything can happen.