When I excused myself briefly from a meeting last night, I confess that it was not – as many may have surmised – the old prostate playing up. I was actually checking on the score in the spring training game between the Sox and the Nationals and thus heard in real time the breaking news that Bryce Harper had signed for the Phillies. €330 million and 10 years was quoted by OB, though it turns out to be 13 years. With no opt-outs!
 
Returning to the meeting room, I found it difficult to focus on preparations for the local elections in my part of Leamington, which is in any case pretty much LibDem Central. I spent the rest of the time working out how this affects the Phillies luxury tax threshold and speculating about the future of Sox closer Kimbrel.
 
The deal with Harper is the biggest single guaranteed contract in baseball.
 
And not merely in baseball. It is the biggest deal in American sports history. In technical terms, it is a shedload of dosh. More even than the previous records – cash and duration - held (briefly) by Stanton at the Yankees and Machado at the Padres.
 
Is Harper worth it?
 
Nah. No-one is. Not even a generational talent like Harper.
 
But that won’t matter to Phillies fans if they win the title. It will, however, matter to Phillies fans if Harper doesn’t do the business. There are one or two Sox players who can tell you what happens to you reputation when a huge contract coincides with diminishing stats. (Where are you now, Carl Crawford?)
 
It’s going to be tough. Can one guy make all the difference to a team that was under .500 last year?
 
He’s got 19 games against the club he has grown up with. He’s got the Mets 19 times. And in August, he’s got a couple of games against the Sox. (We get Machado and the Padres immediately after!)
 
But he knows the National League East well and he’s walking into a hitter’s park (though for lefties not so much) - and they are already talking about Trout next year.
 
It’s all talk, of course, with about as much substance as the rumours that he had turned down Philly and was heading for LA. Only the Dodgers fans believed that.
 
And it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference one way or the other to the Red Sox Nation. Philly won’t go for Kimbrel now unless he drops his demands to a year, in which case he might as well stay with us. If we still want him and maybe we don’t.
 
My response to the whole saga is, I’m afraid, dismissive:

​“Hey, it's no big deal!”

                 RIP Nick Cafardo
              and thanks for the lift.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I was alerted by the excellent Roy Kelly to an article in the New York Times about the Dead and Dark Star, which included a 12 Greatest Dark Stars listing. My need for displacement activity prompted the compilation of my own list, which features (to date) the 20 Greatest. Currently playing is 1970-02-14 at Fillmore East, which eases into St Stephen and The Eleven. So maybe 21 Greatest. 110 to go.

Anyone who has penned a single word about sport will be in awe of Hugh McIlvanney, who died last week. We will miss his insights into and understanding of his subject; but most of all, we will miss his prose. Few writers have managed to articulate so beautifully the cathartic power of, in particular, football and boxing. Fewer still have been able to communicate the exhilaration and despair of those spots of time – memorable moments of triumph or despair which occur in almost every sporting contest.
 
The author Rick Gekoski, no mean sportswriter himself, once wrote that “Sport makes you write, and think, and feel, in exclamation marks”. Which is true for even the most seasoned of us. In 2004, the Boston Globe headlined the Sox World Series victory, their first since 1918, in this way: YES!!! Nothing nuanced: just one word, one syllable, in capitals, with no less than three exclamation marks (or screamers as they are known).
 
I doubt whether McIlvanney would have done this. However tight the deadline, his judgements were as measured as his prose. The emotional sub-text was implicit rather than overt.
 
It is because I lean towards Rick and the Globe in my response to great sporting events that I admired McIlvanney so much. Although he insisted on being known as a ‘reporter’, he was not. One did not turn to his piece to find a blow by blow account of a bout or a goal by goal record of a football match. We valued his writing because it concerned itself with what it meant: to the players, to the coaches, to those who were present as spectators. It is significant that he numbered amongst his closest friends those who were involved totally in the sports about which he wrote. They – Jock Stein, Bill Shankly, Alex Ferguson, Angelo Dundee – knew that he knew and understood as much about their game as they did.
 
In a few weeks, I will be taking part in a round table at the History Department of Warwick University which concerns itself with sportswriting. My fellow panellists – Dave Sternburg, Simon Hart – are stars in the firmament. I am not.
 
Although I am on record with my views about Coventry City Football Club and Warwickshire County Cricket Club, my prime focus is on my beloved Boston Red Sox and the life of a fan based in the baseball desert which is the United Kingdom. (Although judging by the demand for tickets for the Yankees games at the London Stadium this summer, there are more of us in this country than we imagine.)
 
I tend not to engage in a recitation of baseball stats – when I did I was mildly chastised for doing so. Rather, my subject is my very personal and particular experiences of being a fan of a team which plays 3,000 miles away from my home.
 
In many ways, and certainly in the great order of things, it is a trivial pursuit. But almost every night, as I tune in to mlb.tv, I know that I will almost certainly witness something that only sport can provide:
 
In the words of Hugh McIlvanney, “a magnificent triviality”.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: After the fine performance of the Shostakovich String Quartet #2 in A major (actually mostly in A minor) by the Carducci Quartet on Friday evening, I am working my way through their Shostakovich cycle, including an advance copy of their new recordings of #1, #2 and #7. Magnificent and not trivial.

​

“If I get home before daylight / I just might get some sleep tonight.”
 
Every game in the post-season is scheduled to start at 1am UK time, except for tonight in Houston. Which is great news for sleep-deprived Sox fans in the UK, and probably for kids in the States too. (It’s a school night and I know that 8pm ET is prime TV but I wish MLB would give young fans the chance to see whole games.)
 
The best of seven series is tied at one each after an implosion (and some iffy strikes and balls calls at home plate) in Game 1 and a scary end to Game 2. Sale has been in hospital and Price still hasn’t won a post-season game either. But tonight, Nathan Eovaldi takes the mound. And he’s been good.
 
So, too, has the bullpen, especially Matt Barnes and Ryan Brasier. I’m not forgetting Rick Porcello, but I always expect him to do the job. He’s a starter after all and should start in Game 4, which rules him out tonight. The exception of course was Kimbrel, who went through the whole regular season with an ERA of 3.3 something but is currently 10.80 in the post-season.
 
Three appearances. Three runs conceded. Where’s that breaking ball, Craig?
 
We need to win at least one of our three scheduled games in Houston to bring them back to Fenway, and I think tonight could be it. If Eovaldi pitches with anything like the control and variety he showed against the Yankees, and the bullpen continue to be consistent, then we shouldn’t need Kimbrel at all.
 
Assuming the bats continue to swing. They will. I’m looking to Mookie, JD and Rafael Devers to bring the runs home.
 
Mookie is, according to reports, smiling again. JD will want to show Minute Maid Park that he is a better player than they ever saw in an Astros uniform. And you just know that Rafael will relish the chance to make an impact when it matters. He did it in Boston. He can do it in Houston.
 
I think these two teams are the best in baseball right now. I fear that the series will go to the seventh game. I just hope my heart can withstand the tension.
 
But everything is in place. I have told our dinner hosts that I need to be away in good order by 10pm. My Red Sox shirt is laundered and ironed. There is Sam Adams in the fridge. And I confidently expect to be in bed by about 1am with Dirty Water playing in my head.
 
Go Sox!
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: The recent death of Marty Balin has prompted a fest of Airplane shows. Marty’s beautiful voice did not always meld well with the increasingly strident Airplane style towards the end, but he will always be remembered in this household with love and affection for songs such as Coming Back to Me. Listening to a Winterland show (1970-10-04), he shouts out, at the end of Volunteers, “I want a new band!” Sad.
 

I’m not sure how many of us remember the tales of Jennings and Darbishire, written by Anthony Buckeridge in the last century. I read them, or at least the first few, in the ‘50s, enchanted by, and jealous of, the idealized version of my own prep school.
 
A large part of the appeal of the stories was the wordplay and jokes, and I remember one to this day. Jennings has a pet rat, which he keeps in a shoe box as I recall. He is discussing the rat with his amiable housemaster – Mr Carter? – and tells him, “I call it Gloucestershire, sir, because it’s got a long tail.”
 
If you are not smiling, I should explain that, in the cricket county championship of that year, Gloucestershire was noted for its poor batting. Batsmen 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 were incapable of reaching double figures and this was known, in cricketing parlance, as a “long tail”.
 
Don’t worry if you don’t get it; I haven’t heard the expression in years. But my point is that, back in 1957, I and all my fellow 8 year old chums did get it, just as we also got Buckeridge’s Latin puns! Cricket was part of our lives. We knew the scores each day; we knew who was top of the championship, and who was top of the averages.
 
I don’t know any of these today. The county scoreboards are not easily come by. Most of the time, one is not even aware that games are being played. There is no structure to the season. A four day county game or two is followed by a random assortment of one day games, one night games, and day-night games. And we are told that, next year, we shall have yet another competition of 10 overs of 10 balls. Or something like that anyway.

Even the test series is being subjected to the same cavalier treatment of the schedule. Starting today is the second test. And then, nothing until August – apart from ODIs. It’s madness. 

Matthew Engel, once the editor of Wisden, the cricketing bible, wrote recently about this lack of a season-long narrative, attributing his falling out of love with cricket to this vandalism. He used a religious metaphor: he still believes, but no longer attends church with any regularity or enjoyment. And he contrasts cricket with baseball, referring to his daily check on the box scores from St Louis (unaccountably he is a Cardinals fan) and wondering whether next year’s proposed two game series between the Sox and the Yankees may remind English sports fans of what they have lost, certainly what they are missing.
 
I suspect it will. Like Engel, I have embraced the game of baseball. And although I am currently listening to Test Match Special from Headingley, and although I managed a day the Oval test last year, it is baseball that keeps my summer on the daily straight and narrow.

The prospect of rain at Headingley could well England’s best chance of avoiding defeat in the test match.
 
But whatever happens, I fear that English cricket is already facing an innings defeat.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Been listening to the Dead’s run at the Warfield in October 1980. Not my favourite period by any means, but these are very good shows and the work of the digital engineers has worked wonders with some iffy SBDs and audience recordings. Also, on the 11th, John Cippolina makes a guest appearance.

It was midnight UK time when the Sox surrendered the last out and an Opening Day defeat to the Rays.
 
It had all started so well. The Sox arrived in St Petersburg after a short bus ride from Fenway South, with a 22-9 record in the pre-season. They were looking good. And they continued to do so for seven and half innings. Sale was awesome, nine strike-outs, six shut-out innings. The hitting was fine. A Laurel and Hardy moment in the Rays’ outfield gave Nunez an inside-the-park home run. Barnes pitched a 1-2-3.
 
To be honest, it was all pretty routine. A good day at the office. What could possibly go wrong?
 
Pretty much everything. This is why we watch sport, because you couldn’t predict what happened. No-one could expect the implosion that followed, not even the Red Sox Nation, and we’ve seen it all over the years.
 
Kelly couldn’t throw a strike. He walked three. Carson Smith was no better, unable to get what he’s paid for, ground ball double plays rather than the triple that he did manage. Suddenly, we had conceded six runs. All the walks came home to roost. Why was the outfield so shallow?
 
Should Cora have called up young Bobby Poyner, a lefty but someone who has never pitched outside of Double A? Should he have brought in Kimbrel, the best closer in the MLB who he had talked about using in non-save situations?
 
By the time he had Poynter warming up, it was too late. We’d lost the game. Kimbrel never got up from the bench.
 
So far, so Red Sox. Defeat from the jaws of victory. Criticism of the coach for in-game decisions. Relief pitchers blowing a lead. It’s happened before, back on Opening Day 2003, against the same club. The same 4-0 lead from Pedro. The same final score. I remember it well, as I will remember this Opening Day.
 
But there are 161 games to go. And I like the look of the Town Nine this year. I’ve watched a fair number of the Spring Training games, and although I have to keep telling myself that it is only Spring Training, the record was good and the way we won those 22 games was even better.
 
I know that I will have issues with some of Cora’s decisions. It’s all pretty obvious from where I’m sitting, on my sofa, with a glass of wine at hand. It’s a great deal harder from the dugout.
 
Kelly has never walked more than two in his whole career. Smith will get his command back. Cora had every right to expect better than they gave him.
 
So do we.
 
And we’ll get it. We have a powerful line-up. We have a great defense. When they’re all fit, we have a great rotation. And we have JD.
 
What could possibly go wrong?


Today from the everysmith vaults: The Dead on their first 'trip' to the UK and a crazy weekend at the Hollywood Festival outside Newcastle under Lyme. I've had a couple of AUDs for a while, but this is primarily SBD and it seems that the sound guys managed to keep their heads while all around them (including me) were losing theirs!

There are few sportsmen for whom my admiration extends beyond their skills and athletic ability. In fact, there are many whom I am sure I would positively dislike outside the football field, the baseball diamond, the cricket square. We would have nothing in common beyond the fact that they possess a talent I'm in awe of.
 
As fans, we seldom get the opportunity to put this proposition to the test. We don’t meet our sporting heroes, so they remain heroes. Even when we read of some particularly egregious behaviour or political opinion, they are still superstars. Our memories are of that superb goal, that home run or no hitter, that exquisite cover drive.
 
The exceptions prove the rule: Ali, David Ortiz, Garfield Sobers, Learie Constantine, Brian Clough, Romario.
 
To this off-the-top-of-my-head list, I wish to add the name of Cyrille Regis MBE.
 
Together with Laurie Cunningham and Brendan Batson, Cyrille was instrumental in achieving acceptance for black players in British football. When ‘the three degrees’ first played together, some season ticket holders at The Hawthorns sent back their tickets in protest. But the football that they played, and the way that they played it, appealed to the vast majority of fans, whatever their club allegiance and in so doing contributed immeasurably to defeating racism and bigotry on the terraces.

So I was over the moon, Brian, when Bobby Gould signed him for the Sky Blues in 1984. He played seven years and more than 200 games for Coventry and his strength and elegance and goals made him an instant favourite. But it was not solely that wondrous talent. He was, on and off the field, a perfect gentleman.
 
I heard Ian Wright quoted this morning: “My generation of black players were like Malcolm X. But Cyrille was Martin Luther King”.
 
I know this from personal experience. I met him socially only after he had moved on from the City. He would meet up from time to time with his City team-mates in Wilde’s, where he stood apart. Not literally – he would be as much part of any conversation as anyone else present; but his demeanour marked him out.
 
He was tall, slim, always well-dressed and very good-looking (when I introduced him to Jill, she looked up at him and said “No wonder my husband worships you!”).
 
He had that air of self-confidence and calmness which the rest of us  envy. He knew who he was and was content to be what he was.
 
He was a gentleman and a gentle man.
 
I am privileged to have seen him play the beautiful game so beautifully, and proud to have known him, if only a little.

The season ended after 166 games with another American League East title but also another ignominious exit in the divisional series. Marginally better than last year (we won a game!) but still not what we expect. For many clubs, it would have been an acceptable season. Not for us. In the Red Sox Nation, we expect more and better even if we accept each pitching failure, each inability to convert a bases loaded, no outs situation into runs, with a sense of resignation which is born of long and bitter experience.
 
It’s an essential part of our culture, almost a tradition. And, as tradition dictates, the knives must now come out.
 
Last night, my twitter feed was almost exclusively red: red pepper, red labour, red sox, red sox nation; the former preoccupied with changing the course of Brexit, the latter with changing the structure of a club which, put simply, isn’t good enough.
 
There are calls for the firing of Dave Dombrowski and/or John Farrell: “a fish rots from the head down” said one tweeter. There are attacks on David Price: “a sullen presence in the clubhouse”. There are references to our inability to replace Papi and incredulity that Dombrowski believed that Sandoval and Ramirez could do so. There is criticism of Porcello’s reversion to type after a Cy Young season in 2016, together with Sale’s decline in the final weeks of the regular season and, related to this, concern about the effectiveness of Carl Willis as pitching coach.
 
There’s a great deal more, but these are the principal issues, at least on my twitter feed. And I haven’t made it to Boston this year, so I haven’t picked up a sense of the zeitgeist in the city itself. But here’s my long distance view from the baseball desert that is Leamington Spa, England:
 
Farrell should go.
 
I know he has a World Series and two ALE titles. But he also has two last places. I know he’s a nice guy – a friend of Tito’s is a friend of mine – and the bar staff in the Island Creek Oyster Bar speak highly of him. It’s also clear that he has the back of his players, as we saw last night with Pedroia and as we recognized, with some embarrassment, during the Pricegate affair.
 
But I’m not convinced that he is the man to handle Dombrowski’s “win-now” line-up. (Actually, I’m not convinced by the Dombrowski approach at all, but that’s another issue.) As readers of my baseball posts know, I was not in favour of his appointment in the first place and regret Lovullo’s departure deeply. He was a great bench coach under Farrell, and there was a real buzz in Boston when he took over as Farrell recovered from cancer. This year, Lovullo has taken the unfancied D-backs to the play-offs, achieving pretty much the same record as the Sox with significantly fewer resources.
 
We can all second guess specific decisions – why did Sale come out for that final inning last night? – and it’s not Farrell’s fault that Price got injured.
 
But my sense is that the Sox need a shake-up to succeed next year. And the departure of Farrell would be the catalyst for that shake-up.
 
And his replacement?
 
The man for whom we all have total admiration and respect: the awesome legend that is Jason Varitek.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Jorma and Rick Danko playing together in a show from 1987. 

Yes, I know I promised to talk baseball this time, and I will very soon; but the season is only a couple of games in (Sox 2 for 2)  and right now I have to tell you about a couple of wonderful Sunday performances that I’ve been fortunate enough to witness in the last couple of weeks: first, Bach's St Matthew Passion and, a week later, Coventry City’s first appearance at Wembley since 1987.
 
For many years, in a different lifetime, Good Friday was the day on which Jill and I would schlep to Birmingham's magnificent Symphony Hall to see and hear this combination of religious mass and secular opera performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with Willard White (now Sir Willlard White) as Christus. The sheer brilliance of the CBSO, rigorously rehearsed by Simon Rattle (now Sir Simon Rattle), the superb acoustics of the hall itself, and the power of the Symphony Hall organ (featuring a couple of pipes donated by everysmith – a different lifetime indeed!) made these afternoons among the highlights of my extensive experience of live music: right up there with Dylan in 1966, Kyril Kondrashin and the Leningrad Philharmonic in 1971 and the the Dead in 1972.
 
So when it was announced that the Armonico Consort & Baroque Orchestra directed by Christopher Monks was to perform the Passion on period instruments and that Ian Bostridge was to sing the role of evangelist, there was no doubt where we would be between 3pm and 6pm. We were not disappointed. Fortified with a glass of indifferent Chilean Merlot, we were transfixed - is that the right word for a performance of the Passion? – by an extraordinary performance, closer to what one suspects was the original sound than the power and magnificence of those Symphony Hall concerts.
 
Not necessarily better, but different in kind, in style, in its religiosity.

And there was a similar sense of religious fervour the following week, when I was one of more than 43,000 Coventry City supporters travelling to London on a pilgrimage in search of salvation from a season, indeed a decade, of disappointment.
 
It was a wonderful experience, although stressful in the extreme. Only the goals and the final whistle provided exhilaration. But we did it. And the joy in the City half of the ground – rather more than half actually – was palpable.
 
Owners SISU have destroyed the club, in the search for mammon, but Sunday showed that there is still a Coventry City Football Club and it exists in the hearts and minds of those players and those 43,000 fans.
 
It’s a broad church and its breadth and depth will not be diminished nor destroyed by a hedge fund.

​My special commemorative scarf has been passed to my grandson, who wears it with pride. He’s only 6. But quasi cursores vitae lampada tradunt.


Today from the everysmith vaults: A show from last year, at Asbury Park NJ, featuring members of the Dead and Airplane families, including children of the original bands. Another wonderful example of the torch being passed. 

Who would have thought that a referendum could be “divisive” and “cause huge economic uncertainty”?
 
Those are the terms used by Theresa May to describe a second referendum on the issue of Scottish independence. It is of course completely different from the Brexit referendum which was clearly and unequivocally “decisive”; not to mention “the will of the people”, and certainly not to mention “a clear mandate”.
 
As anyone who saw me punching the air as England scored their final try against the hapless Scots last Saturday will confirm, I am English (albeit with a weird mélange of international DNA). But as the shambles of the Brexit process unfolds, Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement yesterday gave me hope.
 
Is it, as our Prime Minister stated, “playing politics”? Or is it a perfectly reasonable response to what is going on in Downing Street and Parliament?
 
It’s the latter. Because, as that exceptional woman Mhairi Black, our youngest MP, has claimed, Westminster is “depressing”, “a waste of time”, “so old and defunct in terms of its systems and procedures”. It can drag down the best of us and raise to the heights the worst of us.
 
In my last post, I remarked that Corbyn is devolving from a man of principle into a politician. Black has intimated that she will not stand again: she is apprehensive about becoming institutionalized or helpless. This, I fear, is happening to Corbyn. 
 
No, Mrs May, politics is a game, and Corbyn and so many others are being forced to play it.

In this parliamentary hangover from the worst of the public school system, games are compulsory.
 
I suspect and hope that Nicola Sturgeon’s determination to allow the Scottish people an opportunity to remain in the EU is the equivalent of the apocryphal action of William Webb Ellis at Rugby School back in 1823.
 
I believe it demonstrates “a fine disregard for the rules of the game”.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I'm listening to an old (1967) John Peel show, featuring Pink Floyd, a band by which I have never been totally convinced, even though they played a great free show for The 1/- Paper at the Cambridge Corn Exchange in ... probably '68 or '69. Anyway, in the middle of the show, randomly, Peel plays a great song called The Red Sox Are Winning by a band called Earth Opera. There's some stuff on YouTube. Anyone got anything else? They're good.

​Two postponements and two games in and we are .500 - won one, lost one.  Game one was excellent in every respect. Price pitched well. Papi hit a homer. Mookie hit a homer and pulled off a great defensive play. Game two was marred by the starting pitching: Buckholtz blew it. But that’s Buckholtz being Buckholtz.
 
The important thing is that we are underway. This is real. So what follows is not my belated season projections. I’ve done those for the last ten years and, to be honest, they have been more an expression of hopes and aspirations than detailed statistical analysis. There are guys who can do that sort of thing a great deal better than I can, and their projections are as wrong as often as my dreams.
 
Watching the first two games here in Europe was exhilarating and, despite the loss, my dream of the play-offs is intact. It may be all about the pitching, but these guys can hit. We out-hit Cleveland in both games and, in each game, scored six runs against good pitching. The Sox are hitting .288 with an .896 OPS. And that’s without any contribution from Xander who is 0 for 9 as I write.
 
I predict that he will get his first hit tonight, backing up the power sinkers of Joe Kelly who had a great spring training. It’s a midnight start for those of us over here but, if the games against Toronto in Montreal are anything to go by, it will be worth the sleep deficit. One of my favourite non-Sox players, Josh Donaldson, will be back to add a frisson to the occasion and anyway the next two games are scheduled for lunchtime. Which is 6pm in the UK and 7pm in France. I’ll be watching the NESN feed on mlb.tv and despite my total admiration for Don Orsillo, I am beginning to warm to OB, even if he hasn’t yet learned that on television rather than radio, sometimes you don’t have to say anything.
 
But all this will pale into insignificance next week when I land at Logan, dump my bag at the Parker House and head up to Fenway Park. I’ve schlepped across the Common and down Commonwealth Ave many times, but 'fanatics have their dreams' and arriving at Fenway is still a dream come true for someone isolated in the baseball desert that is Europe.
 
In my dream, the Sox win their fourth Series this century; Papi has a 30+ HR year (he’s already ahead of schedule!); Price performs consistently like the ace we know he is and is backed up the rest of the rotation; Hanley settles into competence at first and hits for power; Mookie continues to demonstrate that he is potentially one of the greats; Xander comes good; JBJ shows on a daily basis that he is one of the great defensive outfielders in the game today; and the bullpen does its job – don’t think my heart could manage another season like 2015.
 
As for Sandoval, well - sorry Pablo. I really want to be wrong about you, but you don’t figure in my dream at all right now.
 
Realistically? I think we will make the play-offs and then who knows?
 
Not me. I just dream.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Some Merle Haggard, Melancholy Mood from the forthcoming Fallen Angels, but primarily Peter Green and the 1970 manifestation of Fleetwood Mac. Whatever happened to that band? They were good ...