COMMENTARY
For all the decades we spent bemoaning Red Sox failures to win a championship, the toxic stew we’re seeing this season is rare. Eighty-six years and curses duly noted, the Sox have been more frequently mediocre than 12-22 bad. Only once since 1934 have they lost this much, this soon, and it was 24 years ago with a team “likeable and downright interesting,” as Chad Finn wrote in his paean to 1996.
More than that, when they have been truly heinous to watch and support, the darkest days of the Red Sox have almost always managed to produce an ember.