Welcome to Boston (One Sixty-Two: Day 16)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Sixteen: Victor Martinez, Boston Red Sox

There were days, Victor, when a 15-16 start was met with shrugs. Never acceptance, but a shrug nonetheless. Maybe a bitter “here we go again” tossed in as well. I know you’re still new to Boston, Victor, having come over from Cleveland at the trading deadline last July. But you missed the eras when 15-16 was met with patience.

There were those 86 years, of course, in between world championships. As generations of Red Sox fans grew up rooting for the team that Babe Ruth had left behind, the Sox had some pretty ugly records at times. For instance, the Sox had a string of 15 straight losing seasons from 1919-1933. They finished 42 games out of first place in 1954, and 40 games back in 1965. And yet, despite those dark years the Red Sox always managed to rise up again and field terrific teams. With players such as Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice and Wade Boggs, Boston won 85 games or more a total of 30 times between 1938 and 2003 – only to claim not a single championship. In fact, the Sox made the World Series just four times in that span, losing in the deciding seventh game every time. Meanwhile, the Yankees claimed 26 world titles between 1923 and 2000, a record for professional American team sports.

And then, as you know, Victor, things did change. Your current teammate, the big lefty named David Ortiz, turned into the true Babe Ruth of Beantown, leading the Red Sox to their historic wins against the Yankees and Cardinals to claim the 2004 title. Then in 2007, Ortiz and Co. won it all again. Boston has won at least 92 games seven of the last eight seasons, and has become the standard by which 21st-century baseball teams are measured. Fenway Park, always a cinch to draw more than two million fans a year, now pulls in more than three million. Baseball executives study the moves of your general manager, Theo Epstein, as a model of how to build a winning team that also keeps an eye toward the future.

That’s how the Sox got you, Victor. You were smashing balls all over the place in Cleveland, but Epstein wanted your bat enough to give up young players for you. But not his best young players. He held the line, and got you anyhow. Now you’re starting in front of the team’s captain, because the Sox want to win at all costs. So does all of New England, as they tune in each night to listen to your team’s games from the Connecticut coastline all the way up to the tip of Maine.

You’ve finally started hitting the ball in recent days, Victor, just as you’ve done throughout your career. So it’s time you really thought about this – there’s an entire region of the nation about ready to lose their Cracker Jacks if you and your boys don’t start winning games. Embarrassing losses at home to the Yankees are the final straw.

You’re a catcher, Victor, and you’re a great player to boot. So you know what it’s like to carry a team. It’s getting to be mid-May, and the Boston Red Sox are not a 15-16 team. Fenway Park heroes get their numbers retired on the façade beneath the upper deck in right field. Your number 41 would look real nice up there. New England awaits, Victor. Your turn to bat.