Johnny Be Good

    Unlike my friend Dan Drezner, who is struggling mightily to be positive, I take a rather more philosophic view of the move, via free agency, of Johnny Damon from the Red Sox to the Yankees. 

    This obviously helps the Yankees (though we still have some pitching questions) and hurts the Red Sox.  It will remain to be seen if Boston's management can come up with some credible replacement, but I doubt it.  Rather, the Sox will likely have to rely on the recuperation of Schilling and the strength of Beckett to  win with better pitching.  And Schilling is a creaky forty-something....

    So, it looks like the "Evil Empire" has struck again and is well placed to finish ahead of the Red Sox next year again.  I can imagine some Boston fans (though not Dan) crying in their beer at the terrible injustice of it all: the Big, Bad Yankees stealing away the dreams of Fenway.   Well, as Mencius said, "inequality is in the very nature of things."  As long as MLB continues to allow the big market, big money teams to have their way, New York, the biggest market and the biggest money, will go right on pulling these sorts of moves.  I have always wondered why other owners wouldn't at some point wise up and try to move in more of a revenue-sharing direction, like the NFL.  I guess that some owners (and I would include Boston owners here) believe that they can beat the Yankees at the big money game.  And Boston did in 2004.  But, over the long haul, New York holds the advantage and the Yankees will press that advantage as they have done with Damon. 

     From a Boston perspective (if I can be allowed to pretend for a moment), a Taoist sensibility makes the most sense.  Taoists, too, recognize a certain naturalness to inequality (perhaps certain conservatives would agree), but they also see an inevitable dynamism and unpredictability to the order of things:

For things sometimes lead and sometimes follow,
sometimes sigh and sometimes storm,
sometimes strengthen and sometimes weaken,
sometimes kill and sometimes die.
     - Tao Te Ching, 29

     Beyond the resonance with Ecclesiastes, maybe this passage is telling Red Sox fans to just let Johnny go.  World Series come and World Series go (though they seem to go more than come to Boston).   Destiny and fate will turn your way again some time, maybe not next year, but maybe not after another 86 years either (2090?).  After all, looking up at those strong  Yankees, you might want to keep this in mind:

The weakest in all beneath heaven gallops through the strongest,
and vacant absence slips inside solid presence.
     -  Tao Te Ching, 43

     Wasn't that a White Sox cheer this year?

Comments

[Renee Watabe]

All I know is that the Boston Red Sox World Series win was the pinnacle of this NY/NJ Mom's baseball experience. I watched every game, yelling at the t.v. , unable to sit, turning redcoat in front of my incredulous Yankee fan children, enduring their taunts of "Traitor!" woke every morning to read about the previous night's game, play by play , reliving each glorious moment towards victory. I figured , if the Red Sox won, anything was possible, pigs could fly, there was justice for the underdog under the heavens.
For once in my life, I actually CARED about sports. It was downright heady.
Johnny Damon, the Prince, in one fell swoop, has disillusioned me forever. And for what? 52 million dollars? Hm! My team loyalty had no price. sigh.