Pretty amazing to watch the Red Sox implode like they did down the stretch in September to go 7-20 and lose out to the Tampa Bay Rays for the AL wild card. But if you’re a savvy follower of The Great White Shank, you wouldn’t have been all that surprised: all the way back in May I was bemoaning the fact that they started out of the gate 2-10 after dropping their last eight spring training games - a feat I still find impossible to comprehend.

Clearly this was a team that either: a) believed all the predictions that they were a shoo-in for the World Series and thought all they had to do was show up, b) came in out of shape, unmotivated, and unprepared, or c) both. No matter what the case, it was clear throughout the season - even when they were going great guns in July and August - that manager Terry Francona had lost control of the team. The pitching staff was uneven, the defense was uneven, at times even listless, and there really seemed to be a lack of joy and passion from the manager on down.

I understand professional baseball is not college football, so one has to be careful about intangibles like a “clubhouse leader” and a rah-rah type of passion. But this team was not a likeable one all year. Outside of second baseman Dustin Pedroia, centerfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, and outfielder Josh Reddick for a time, I don’t recall too many players getting dirty and giving it their all during the games. Is it asking so much to show that you at least care? Or at least play fundamental baseball?

Of course, throwing Francona under the bus as unceremoniously as he was, the impending departure of GM Theo Epstein, and the infighting that is still going on between the players and the fans, the fans and media, the media against other media, and the owners against, well, everyone (and vice-versa) is not a pretty sight. In fact, it’s pretty embarrassing if you’re a Red Sox fan. But maybe this is a good thing - spill your guts, empty all barrels, and bring new people in to clean up the mess and start over. It wouldn’t bother me one bit.

Frankly, the only people I’d be keeping as my core are pitchers Josh Beckett, John Lester, Clay Buchholz, Daniel Bard, and Jonathan Papelbon; first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, Pedroia, left fielder Carl Crawford (he’s too good to have as bad a year as he did this year), Ellsbury, and DH David Ortiz. The rest of the bunch you can trade for a bag of balls (or a set of Obama administration playing cards featuring all the articles of the Constitution they have broken thus far) and clean house.

Gordon Edes is right: make a few good moves, put the lineup in a way that Terry Francona never cared about to understand - a lineup of Ellsbury/Crawford/Pedroia/Gonzalez/Ortiz is a good way to start - and get everyone revved up to play some good fundamental baseball (again, something that Francona never cared enough about), and this team will seriously contend.

Right now it ain’t pretty, but there’s a lot of snow to fall and a lot of Hemingway Daiquiris (how’s that for a teaser on tomorrow’s post?) to drink between now and spring training. Come February with some new management and new faces, and people will forget about 2011 quick enough. Especially if pitcher John Lackey is booted out of town and pitcher Tim Wakefield is presented his gold watch for many years of dedicated service.

Still, that doesn’t make it any more palatable to watch it all melt down as it is doing at the present time.

I doubt too many prognosticators (yours truly included) had the Tigers, Rangers, Cardinals, and Brewers in Major League Baseball’s version of the “Final Four”, but that just goes to show you how difficult it is to project team performance over a 162-game season that lasts the better part of eight months of play. If the NFL schedule (no one calls it a “season”) is a sprint, given its concentrated five months of one game per week play, Major League Baseball truly is a marathon considering all the games and the travel that goes along with it.

Most people projected the Red Sox and the Phillies to make it to the World Series based upon their pitching, but that was back in April, and as the Sox found out in September, pitching depth can be an elusive quality indeed; as the Phillies found out in October, anything can happen in a best 3-of-5 series after a long regular season.

Red Sox GM Theo Epstein has made a lot of questionable signings during his tenure, but he was on target when he said the whole goal of the organization was to win 90+ games every year - the thought being, most years 90+ wins would be sufficient to get you into the playoffs. He was roundly criticized and raked over the coals by the Boston media for that statement, but he was right. Think about it, Phillies and Yankees fans: what has finishing in first place done for your teams in MLB’s post-season?

The fact is, the Major League Baseball season is so long that, by the time you get to October, no matter who you are, it’s the hottest team at the time in terms of pitching that determines who will get to the World Series. What a team looks like on paper in April has little, if anything, to do with how that team will look and play come October. While undoubtedly it takes talent to get to the World Series, after a long regular season both momentum and no small amount of good fortune is required as well.

Me, I’m glad to see the Cardinals and the Brewers and the Rangers and the Tigers play for all the marbles. While payroll might make you look good on paper and impress the early-season prognosticators, it can never buy you a World Series championship.

Like the old Smith-Barney commercials went, you still have to earn it.

Me, I’m rooting for a Tigers - Cardinals matchup: talk about a baseball classic. But any combination of these four teams would be good.

Forget about tonight’s blowout of the Blue Jays, this is a team in deep trouble. Let’s take it from the top:

Starting pitching: You’ve got Jon Lester and Josh Beckett, sure, and that’s as good a 1-2 as any team has in baseball, but excuse me for thinking that you need four decent starters for the playoffs and (if you get there) the World Series, and the Sox have an awful rest of the rotation. I can’t watch John Lackey pitch - what GM Theo Epstein saw in this guy to give him a boatload of cash to pry him away from the Angels totally escapes me. He’s a glorified batting practice pitcher. Erik Bedard’s knee, which kept him out of a large portion of this season, is flaring up again (surprise!), Andrew Miller is not to be trusted under any circumstances, and don’t even get me started on Tim Wakefield. I don’t care that he needs one win to reach 200, he’s a four-inning pitcher who gets lit up as soon as the lineup sees him a second time around. If this is all the Sox have as rotation heading into the playoffs, expect an early exit, no matter who they play.

Bullpen: You’ve got Aceves, Bard, and Papelbon. The rest are pretty freakin’ useless as far as I can tell. Matt Albers had a great first half, but when the Orioles deem a pitcher worthy of release (the Orioles!) that should tell you something. Manager Terry Franocona has totally misused Dan Wheeler to the point where the guy has no confidence. And the rest of the bunch you can give away for a bag of balls in return. Do not get me started on Franklin Morales. Perhaps if you had a top of the rotation of Beckett-Lester-Clay Buchholz you could get away with this cast of characters, but with Buchholz out for the rest of the year, having only two dependable starters puts a lot of pressure on a bullpen. Especially this one.

Infield: I worry about shortstop - a lot. I’m no Jed Lowrie fan, and don’t quite understand Francona’s love of the guy. He’s nothing but potential, he’s afraid of going all-out for fear of getting hurt again, and he’s a lousy shortstop. So I guess it’s Marco Scutaro and pray like hell he doesn’t get hurt. First base (Adrian Gonzalez), second base (Dustin Pedroia) and third base (Kevin Youkilis) are rock solid, although I can’t help but think Youkilis is worn down from playing so many games at a demanding position like 3B. He looks sluggish to me. Pray none of these guys get hurt, or else we’re stuck with Lowrie.

Outfield: I don’t ever want to see J.D. Drew in a Red Sox uniform ever again. Ever. I’d play Josh Reddick for better or for worse the rest of the way, since he’s helped get us this far, and those are the cards we’ve been dealt. The less of Darnell McDonald I see the better I like it - the guy really can’t hit. Of course, CF Jacoby Ellsbury is having a MVP year both offensively and defensively. Which brings me to Carl Crawford. No one in Red Sox Nation - and I mean no one looked more forward to seeing him in a Red Sox uniform, as he absolutely killed us every year he was with Tampa Bay. But for at least this year the guy stinks. Takes pitches he should swing at, swings at piches he shouldn’t, and when he does it’s a horrible looking swing. He’s been late behind every fastball this year. He’s terrible and frustrating as all hell to watch, to the point where I won’t even watch him when he’s a bat. A huge disappointment.

Catching: A real bright spot this year. Except for that game two weeks ago when, after swinging at three straight crappy sliders in the dirt from Yankees reliever Boone Logan, I threatened to take up tequila again and toss my 55″ widescreen in the swimming pool, Jarrod Saltalamacchia has been more than anyone ever could have hoped for as a starting catcher, both offensively and defensively. And captain Jason Varitek has been awesome as a once or twice a week starter. Between them, the Sox have as good a catching tandem as there is in the majors.

What I worry the most about these Sox is that they’ve been maddeningly inconsistent over the past few weeks, and I’m not sure why. Yesterday they got shut out by the Blue Jays, today they pounded the crap out of them, would anybody be truly surprised if they scored only one or two runs again tomorrow and lost? I wouldn’t. Crawford is the real problem in that lineup; manager Terry Francona has done everything he can to hide him, but you can’t hide ugly. If he was having anything close to the kind of seasons he had in Tampa Bay, the Sox would have at least 5-6 more wins - perhaps more. But I don’t see any hope for him, so I don’t know what the Sox can do except head into the post-season with the cards they’ve been dealt.

I wish I could say different, but I’m not very bullish on their chances.

As we look back on the four majors played on the 2011 professional golf calendar, it’s going to be hard to imagine future years matching the level of excitement and drama that we saw this year at the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the just-completed PGA Championship. I mean, think about it: if you recall, the back nine at The Masters provided some of the greatest excitement ever seen at a major, with the fate of no less than eight golfers seemingly hinging on a single swing, and everyone (announcers included) clueless as to what would happen next. Then, at the U.S. Open at Congressional we saw young Rory McIloy not only live up to all the hype to capture his first major, but avenge his Masters meltdown (a final round 80).

The Open Championship at Royal St. George’s last month lived up to every expectation with the rain, the wind, and a Mickelson charge that fell short, allowing sentimental favorite Darren Clarke to take home the claret jug. And then, to top it all off, this past weekend at the PGA where it seemed a true changing of the guard was taking place - Tiger Woods missing the cut and a 3rd-round leaderboard filled with a bunch of fearless young guns. Watching Keegan Bradley rebound from triple-bogey disaster at the 15th and Jason Dufner struggle to hold on through a brutal last four holes made for as compelling golf as one will ever see.

I’m not sure there is much to be learned from each of these events in total - each had its own drama and unique tale to tell - but it would be hard to ignore the fact that 2011 (at least as far as the majors are concerned) ends with three extremely talented youngsters (Charl Schwartzel, McIlroy, and Bradley) winning their first majors and giving us a glimpse into what should be years of exceptional golf to come, eclipsing both those at the top of world rankings (Luke Donald, Lee Westwood, Martin Kaymer, etc.) and those greats of majors past who seem to have shown their first signs of golf mortality (Woods, Mickelson).

There’s a lot of leaves and snow to fall before the first 2012 major, but I can’t wait for Augusta to see how the golf world looks at that time.

My apologies for the brevity of this post, I just wrapped up a ten-hour weekend workday and I’m pooped. Thank God for Johnny Walker, he always gives me something to look forward to at the end of a long day. We had a “dust sky” at dusk today that turned everything into a strange and eerie dusky coral color, but the picture I took with my Blackberry just didn’t do it justice.

That was a great series played this weekend between the Sox and the Evil Empire, wasn’t it? OK, so no one loves four-hour baseball, but both teams are so incredibly evenly matched that it’s hard not to envision an American League Championship series between them to determine who gets slaughtered by the Phillies in the World Series.

If you’re a Sox fan, you have to love the take-aways from this series: a resurgent Carl Crawford and continued above-expectation play by catcher Jarrod Saltalmacchia and right-fielder Josh Reddick (nice walk-off double against “The Fruitbat”, Josh!). And John Lackey’s start on Saturday night was a good omen of things to come.

If you’re a Yankees fan, you have to be concerned about the fact that the Beantown Nine’s continued success against starter C.C. Sabathia and closer Mariano Rivera. The Sox have absolutely no fear when it comes to these guys, and you can bet that the Yankees will be overly dependent on both of them come the playoffs. And what was that with Yankees manager Joe Girardi not bringing said “Fruitbat” out for the tenth inning after he had only thrown nine - count ‘em, nine! - pitches to dispatch the Sox the previous inning? I mean, you bring in Tuesday’s scheduled starter (Phil Hughes) to pitch the tenth? That’s just bad managing. But no one ever said Girardi was a great manager to begin with. Actually, he’s a jerk. Like the rest of the Yankees.

Sure, Stevie Williams is gonna catch a lot of flack for his comments after Adam Scott’s win this past weekend at Firestone, but I’m with him here. It’s obvious Williams feels deeply hurt and disrespected by Tiger Woods after patiently waiting around a good year and a half for Woods to get his life and golf act back together and then, simply because he wanted to go out and (gasp!) try and make some bread by looping for Scott, he gets unceremoniously sacked by Woods for so-called “disloyalty”.

If I’m Williams I’d feel exactly the same way and call Tiger out for being the ass he is. It just goes to show that, no matter how hard you work to become one of the the greatest professional golfers that ever lived, achieving class and respect is something that some people find unattainable. And that’s something Tiger will never have. Good for you, Stevie.

You can bet Rob and Dave are pretty hepped that the NFL owners and the players have reached a new 10-year agreement that will get everyone back to work and protect the 2011 NFL season in its entirety. I’m not much of a football fan myself, but all I could think of during the work stoppage were all the people who would be affected should the season be lost or shortened. Think of all the workers in the stadiums, bars, restaurants and parking lots whose livelihoods would be affected far worse than any of the millionaires and billionaires haggling over millions of dollars in revenue. Especially with the economy the way it is now, the last thing this country needs is major league sports taking a siesta.

Now that the NFL has gotten its act straightened out, here’s hoping the NBA owners and players see the light as well.

Hats off and more than a polite golf clap to Rory McIlroy, runaway winner of the 2011 U.S. Open. There will be a lot of debate over how supposedly “tame” Congressional C.C. was in allowing so many players to go under par over the weekend, but the fact remains, you take away Rory’s over-the-top performance, and you end up with a pretty dramatic Sunday finish with lots of players hanging around the -4 to -8 spots.

I will say this about the USGA and the way Congressional was set up for this week: 1) anytime you try and schedule a U.S. Open in June in Washington, D.C. you’re asking for trouble. You could get a long period of blistering hot weather that would burn up the greens if you’re not too careful with the H2O; otherwise, like this week, you get torrential rains and the golf course is laying open for the taking like Paris Hilton in one of her home movies. The weather being something you cannot control, you’re playing with fire either way.

To me, as lovely a course as Congressional is, I think it sets up more as a PGA venue more than a U.S. Open one. Then, it being August, let the thunderstorms drop whatever rain they will, just grow the rough out, shring the fairways a bit, and let the tee boxes and pin placements do their work. No one would complain about a -8 or so winner at a PGA.

That being said, anyone who complains about the scores at this year’s Open does a great disservice to McIlroy. Forget about all the sub-par scores, the fact is Congressional’s set-up played to his strengths and he took advantage of it like no other player in he field. McIlroy deserves all the accolades he gets, and it will be exciting to see where his career goes from here.

Rory McIlroy is the “feel good story” of the year - from the depths of despair at Augusta to the top of the heap in Bethesda, very seldom do you get such redemption stories like that. He’s got a huge competitive streak beaneath that “aw shucks” demeanor, but he comes across a genuine, humble - and, better yet, a fast-playing - golf role model. After the Tiger Woods crap of the past two years, you can’t do a whole lot better than that.

Congrats to Rory McIlroy. Well done!

It was blistering hot today - a real jump into the furnace of mid-summer after a very long period of some hot but tolerable days.

As hot as today was, however, it can’t compare to how hot the Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins were this post-season. So how about those Bruins? Never watched them all year but felt compelled to flip back and forth between last night’s Game 7 and the Red Sox on NESN. Hard to believe it’s been 39 years since their last Stanley Cup. I remember being 16 back in 1972 and working as a stockroom clerk at the W.T Grant’s department store when the Bruins of the Bobby Orr/Phil Esposito era won their last Cup before last night. That, my friends, was a long time ago.

I’m no hockey fan, but it’s great that Boston is once again the hockey capital of the world. Congratulations to the black and gold - hockey once again reigns supreme in Boston!

…at least until, it is hoped, baseball does in October.

Sad news from across the pond on Saturday, where legendary golfer Seve Ballesteros lost his battle with brain cancer and passed away quietly at the age of 54. Yahoo! Sports writer Jonathan Wall succinctly writes of Ballesteros’ impact on the game of golf:

It’s hard to put into words how important Ballesteros was to the game of golf. During his career, he amassed 91 professional wins, 5 major championships, and was credited with helping turn the European Tour into a proving ground for the game’s elite. While his success was legendary, it was Seve’s charisma on the course that seemed to captivate us all. When he stepped over an impossible shot, you almost knew something incredible was about to happen.

When Seve was playing, he was always one I looked forward to watching. He was tenacious, imaginative, fiery, charismatic, and just fun to watch. Had a bunker game that was incomparable. From his play he inspired a new generation of golfers who have helped raise the exposure of the European Tour and turn golf into the global sport it is today. In a day where too many of today’s young pros seem as if they’ve been churned out of cookie-cutter college golf factories, lacking in color, personality, and creativity, Seve Ballesteros stands out as a giant whose legacy will endure long beyond the sadness of his passing.

Here’s a nice tribute to Ballesteros, although why it didn’t include either this shot or this shot or this putting trick is a puzzler, for from them you really get an idea of his unique and exciting talents. It’s a shame he passed away at such an early age - he still should have had plenty of golf left in him.

Rest in peace, Seve - you were one of the greats and you will be missed.

After the past couple of days I need a break from serious topics; it’s time to get on to truly important stuff, like:

Check out this article on the best 19th holes in golf. And be sure to check out the gallery that accompanies it - there are some beautiful places out there to quaff a beer or cocktail after a long day on the links. Fellow Goodboy Steve “Killer” Kowalski will get to see The Tap Room at Pebble Beach when he plays there next month.

The 2011 U.S. Open at Congressional C.C. is going to be fun to watch. It’s one of my favorite courses to watch on TV - a beautiful tract (isn’t that gorgeous!). And it sounds like it’s going to be quite the challenge. As it ought to be.

Word on the street is that there’s a bit of an arms race going on ahead of this year’s Goodboys Invitational. I hear the the fore-mentioned “Killer” Kowalksi has upgraded his entire arsenal with new woods and irons, I’ve got my new Cobra S2 woods (if I can learn to hit them I’ll be deadly!), so I’m wondering if anyone else out there cares to make their intentions known?

I’m not tipping anyone’s hand here, but word is The Oaks Golf Links in Somersworth, New Hampshire and Black Swan Country Club in Georgetown, Massachusetts are both under consideration for this year’s Goodboys Invitational. If anyone out there has played these tracts post a comment.

As for me, I’d love to see the semi-private Portsmouth Country Club allows the Goodboys three of their precious tee times on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon - it’s my all-time favorite course. Portsmouth is like my own personal Congressional. I’ve never played that well there, but I love it nonetheless.