Before we start let me state that sports teams “mean” enough things to enough people that there’s no good definition of what they inherently “are.” So when I ask “Are the Red Sox still the Red Sox?” it’s hard for even me to pin down what I mean. The closest analogy I can think of is the “there are dinner jackets and there are dinner jackets” scene from Casino Royale — there are the Red Sox, and there are the Red Sox. The question is: Which ones are these?
The inspiration for this column came from a shitpost, as in the best it does, in which our own Jake Wallinger was reacting to Craig Breslow saying he relied on “the vision to dictate the moves,” which let to this.