John Tomase and Trenni Casey look back on the Red Sox’ decision to trade Mookie Betts to the Dodgers
Note to whoever is manning the Weston Observatory on Friday night: When your seismograph starts twerking sometime around 7:12 p.m., don't worry, it's not the big one.
It's just Red Sox fans releasing nearly four years of repressed energy with an epicenter of Fenway Park. If an earthquake can sound equal parts rapturous and enraged, this will be the night, because Mookie Betts is finally coming home.
To say the reaction Betts receives when he leads off for the Dodgers will be complicated doesn't even begin to explain it. There's no doubt the ovation will be loud and loving and long. Betts earned all of the above during his six years in Boston, which included an MVP, World Series, and megawatt (if reserved) smile.
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There is absolutely nothing to dislike about him. He bowled 300 games! He shared playoff food with the homeless! He wore a plastic baseball necklace some kid made for him! And he played his ass off.
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He should've been a Red Sox for a life, but finances intervened. Somewhere in the afterglow of the 2018 championship, owner John Henry decided he wanted to build a winning team without necessarily buying it. He punted Dave Dombrowski onto Lansdowne Street and hired Chaim Bloom, and here's where the story gets thorny.
Bloom's first order of business was trading Betts, a move most fans didn't hold against the young executive, even if they hated it. When ownership hires you to do a thing, you do the thing. What it heralded, however, is one of the most unsatisfying eras of Red Sox baseball, a four-year stretch of mediocrity surrounding one outlier run to the American League Championship Series, with no guaranteed end in sight, unless a bunch of teenagers in Greenville, Portland, and the Dominican Republic can eventually coalesce.
When Red Sox fans make their feelings for Betts clear on Friday night, it won't just be adoration. They'll be directing a portion of their passion towards ownership and the front office, too.
The standing ovation Betts receives will rival anything in the history of former Red Sox, whether it's Fred Lynn returning with the Angels, Carlton Fisk coming back with the White Sox, or Pedro Martinez taking the hill for the Mets. At least those guys departed with varying degrees of acrimony. The Red Sox never gave Betts a chance to spurn them, because they traded him before he could leave.
They are now reaping the whirlwind. They've exceeded expectations this season, but that's not a high bar. They're probably going to finish fourth in the AL East and on the outside of the playoff race for the fourth time in five years. Such a streak would've once convinced ownership to go get a player like Betts in free agency, but those days are gone. Now they're all about value and not imperiling the future, and it just leaves the present in perpetual limbo.
We may eventually learn it's a misguided approach, but that could take another three wasted years. And to think when the Red Sox traded Betts on the eve of spring training in 2020, I was on board. I didn't believe their contention window aligned with his, and I feared he'd break down, given his slight stature. I guess I was right on the first count, but I couldn't have been more wrong on the second.
Betts arrives in Boston leading the National League in slugging percentage and OPS, with a legitimate chance to top 40 homers for the first time in his career. If it wasn't for Ronald Acuña Jr.'s pursuit of baseball's first 30-70 season, Betts would be the runaway MVP favorite. He's doing it while playing a damn good second base, an improbable move for a Gold Glove outfielder, but he's merely stepping up selflessly after starting shortstop Gavin Lux tore an elbow ligament in spring training.
Much has been made of how happy and engaged Betts appears in Los Angeles, where his face adorns billboards, his fans include LeBron James, and his celebrity helps Jackie Robinson documentaries get made. We saw glimpses of Mookie's personality in Boston – the "WHOO!" reaction after his 13-pitch grand slam vs. the Blue Jays in 2018 remains an all-timer – but there has been no need to read between the lines in L.A. He's comfortable, he's front-facing, and he's a superstar.
He could've been all of those things in Boston, but we'll never know. Some believe he wanted to leave. Others say the Red Sox didn't really extend themselves to retain him. Parsing who's to blame is an exercise in pointlessness, however, because he's not coming back.
Except he is, if only for the weekend. Put your ear to the ground around first pitch on Friday night, and you may even be able to feel his return. The instruments of the U.S. Geological Survey surely will.
