In retrospect, we should’ve seen this coming.
Great teams are made by great players. And although we’d forgotten about him for understandable reasons, the 2023 Boston Red Sox opened the season with a pitching staff led by one of the greatest pitchers of the 21st century.
Christopher Allen Sale, that wiry, fiery, son of the Gulf Coast, swaggered back into the baseball world like a gunfighter kicking open the doors of a Dakota Territory saloon.
It started, of course, with that now legendary Patriots Day game. Sale vs. Ohtani on a festive, warm day when the daffodils easily outnumbered the clouds.