The Red Sharts

A shart: here's a quick explanation for those of you with too much elegance, class and maturity to know what I'm referencing. A shart, a word that combines the words "shit" and "fart," is often a gamble, a stare-down with the gods. When one sharts, the individual feels the need to pass gas; however, they also know if they go ahead and fart, there's a real chance they might shit their pants. Sure, sometimes it slips, completely beyond one's control, and the person is left feeling as helpless as a baby with a soiled diaper. And, in essence, the analogy is holds true. This, however, is not the type of shart I'll be using as the metaphor in this post.

There is a second type of shart. Here, the individual, in a bold act of hubris, believes they are above shitting their pants. They believe they are better than a person who shits their pants. They believe they are impervious to such shame. So the arrogant son of a bitch goes ahead, gambles, and lets loose. And what happens? They have a total and complete mess on their hands. They're utterly humiliated, and they stink of ass.

The 2012 Red Sox are a shart.
  
Let's begin with the hubris factor. If you remember back in spring training for 2011 season, Mr. Josh Beckett predicted his team---who would go 5-16 in September and top off the worst collapse in baseball history---would win 110 games. I will say nothing about the fried chicken and beer, nothing about the way the players took no accountability for their own bad behavior. It's a new season, and they have a chance to atone.

Nope. These arrogant bastards have come out this year and have played like a bunch of entitled teenage princesses. Them, shit their pants? No. Never. They're too good. They're too popular. They can fart wherever they damn well please with total impunity. They can fart at the theater, they can fart at clubs, and they can certainly fart on the golf courses. Hell, it'll never happen to them. And, if it does, so what? There's no humility on Yawkey Way these days.

Instead, it's the Red Sox fans enduring the humiliation. Due to the fact that there is zero accountability in the clubhouse, we're the ones standing in the center of room, dung dripping down our legs, running for the exits. We're the ones wearing bags over our heads, disgraced. We're the ones who hear the collective laughter of the entire baseball world as they hold their stomachs and point their fingers at us and our hometown team. Sure, being a Red Sox fan my whole life, there have been some miserable times---i.e. 1986 and 2003---but, honestly, this feels like rock-bottom. I have never felt embarrassed to wear my Red Sox hat in public, but these days, there's something slightly shameful, something that smells real bad.
   
So what is the solution? The solution is simple. Clean up the mess, throw away the old shorts and replace them with a new pair, and then move on with your life. In other words, start by dumping Josh Beckett, the ring leader, which will be difficult seeing he's a 10-5 guy. However, this will, at the very least, break up the player entitlement and bread with the fans. Hell, dump Buccholz, dump Papi, and dump Youkilis, too. Clean up the whole mess. This season, I'm sad to say, might actually be the Red Sox bridge year, the start of new beginning. Bring up Iglesius, keep Middlebrooks at the corner, get Lavarney some AB's, and start thinking toward the future. In a year or two, this will all be a bad memory. In a year or two, we'll start to forget about the 2012 Red Sharts. In a year or two, this all will seem like a bad, bad dream.