Mike McMahon
Journal Staff

There is no way to sugarcoat it, no positives to take out of it, not even a general sense of  “We’ll get em’ next year”. October could not come fast enough for the Boston Red Sox and for all the wrong reasons. The worst part of it all is even after the games have ended, the losing has continued off the field and it does not look like there is an end in sight.  Red Sox Nation is in recession and left wondering what else can possibly go wrong?
Today’s Red Sox fan is a little different than the typical Red Sox fan of 20 years ago. The new age of Sox fans have more of this immortal and perpetual hope that good things are going to happen. As September dragged on, and then continued to drag on, there was still a somewhat optimistic expectation. It was not until the last week of the season that Sox fans really grasped that not making the playoffs was a more than plausible outcome for the dwindling Red Sox.
Then the Red Sox did what they have been so good at doing the past 80 or so years, making it hurt, a lot. In a must win game in the nightcap of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium, the Sox held tough for 14 innings. Jacoby Ellsbury belted one over the short porch in right field and postponed my impending heart attack. At that moment, there was a glimmer of light. Any Sox team of the past 10 years would thrive over a win like that in the coliseum of baseball with such dire consequences looming. This game would propel them back into a World Series chase, right…?
That was my first mistake as I was just naive enough to believe in this Sox team again.  But my second mistake came after the Sox lost to the Orioles in the opener of a three game series and I began to realize that the Sox might not be able to get into the playoffs by themselves.
It was at this time I committed the ultimate crime and it will be something I will never forgive myself for as I started to root for the Yankees. I knew if the Yankees could just beat the Rays it wouldn’t matter if the Sox won or not. How pathetic is that? Sox fans rooting for a hated foe just so we could limp into October and inevitably get embarrassed. So moments after Robert Andino, deemed “The Great Andino” by Sox haters everywhere, dropped the game winning hit under the glove of Carl Crawford and then Evan Longoria lined one over the left field wall to end the Sox season it all dawned on me.
As an adolescent Sox fan, we have become everything that generations of Sox fans before us grew up hating, spoiled fans. The fact that there are Sox fans right now blaming the Yankees by accusing them of throwing the games against the Rays says it all.
Ever since 2004, the Red Sox as an organization began to change slowly. They began to leave behind their image of the team everyone feels sorry for because nothing ever goes right to a team that gave people a lot of reasons to hate them.
The development of “Red Sox Nation” brought upon half-hearted fans that would be with the team as long they were winning. Another championship came in 2007 and the expectations would now consistently be World Series or failure. That’s when the front office for the Red Sox took a turn. They became the evil empire that we all used to hate.
In essence, the Red Sox were becoming the New York Yankees. Yeah, I said it. As expectations grew, so did the Red Sox payroll. Theo Epstein started paying free agents more than what his core players were making, something that the Sox always used to be against.
This hit its peak the last two off-seasons with John Lackey, Carl Crawford, and the contract extension of Adrian Gonzalez. The Red Sox aren’t supposed to sign these big names; the Yankees are supposed to get these names while us Sox fans sit there and complain about the Evil Empire.
So maybe we got ahead of ourselves. Sox fans forgot why winning in 2004 and 2007 was so great. It was because the Sox did it with a group of guys that meshed really well and had character.
They had lots of solid ball players with a couple studs that all played incredibly motivated baseball. It never seemed like the chemistry was quite there this year for the Sox. Excluding guys like Pedroia, Youkilis, and Varitek, there was a lot of individualism on this Sox team.
There were dirty looks from pitchers when plays were not made, lack of concentration in the field, and lack of execution on simple plays, all signs of selfishness and discontent.
So now it’s time to take a step back, lower the expectations slightly, hope they make the right personnel moves, and go back to the days where the Sox weren’t a team you expected to win, but a team that you prayed would win.