Time to Pipe In

Last time I posted...nearly a month ago...I mentioned that I would be piping back in as September continued to heat up.

Well it did heat up...in the form of an implosion. And I just didn't want to relive the mess that the Red Sox season became.

Now, a few weeks following the greatest September collapse in MLB history, the Sox look to be heading into blow-it-up-and-start-over mode.

Granted, being the second-highest spending team in the league, starting over in Boston isn't quite the same as starting over in, say, Pittsburgh.

All that being said, so far the Sox brass has fired Tito and in doing so they have also been starting a bit of a smear campaign to sully the reputation of arguably one of the most successful coaches in Sox history as he leaves town.

This following is an excerpt from a Gordon Edes article from ESPN.com on how Sox management is making a habit of ending things poorly:

He is through with Boston, even if "team sources" may not be through skewering him. Francona in the end took it from all sides -- from the players who violated his trust, from the players who did not intervene like they do on winning teams and call the miscreants to account, to the highest levels of management whose sense of decency apparently went on hiatus at the end.

"I think people are starting to recognize there's a pattern here. All of a sudden it becomes personal, especially with guys who have had so much success in that uniform," Garciaparra said on "SportsCenter" Wednesday.

"If we want to go down the list ... now we're hearing about Terry Francona, before Terry ... it was Johnny Damon, before him you had Derek Lowe, you had Pedro Martinez, you hadManny Ramirez, you had myself, then you had Mo Vaughn, then you had Roger Clemens, then you had Jim Rice, Carl Yastrzemski, and oh, by the way, one Ted Williams.

"So the list is pretty good, pretty prestigious, but it seems to happen. So there's a pattern. Is it all these guys that are bad or is there something more here?"

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A lot has been written in recent weeks about the behavior of the players...most notably this article today in the Globe. This indicates to me that it was probably time for Tito to move on...but that doesn't change what he accomplished here in this town. And it sure doesn't mean you should kick him in the nuts on his way out.

Stay Classy John Henry.

Now the latest tonight is that it looks as though Henry and crew are reportedly are letting GM Theo walk to the North Side of Chicago.

Let the piling on begin.

Me, I don't get it. Here we have someone who was instrumental in bringing the first championship to this town for the first time in 86 years in 2004, and then doing it again a few years later.

While Theo's free agent signing track record is less than stellar, he has shown a knack for building up the farm system and developing talent.

All the Theo haters better be careful what they wish for...as the grass is not always greener. People may one day soon look back at what the Sox have become and long for the Theo Epstein days.