All this talk about Wily Mo, while leading to very interesting electronic conversation, is getting us off my main topic, which is the way Bronson Arroyo was treated.

I know that supposedly there was no "handshake agreement." And I know that Bronson will turn out fine, move on to his new place, and make a go of it over at Grover Cleveland, so to speak. (That reference would've been perfect if he'd been traded to Cleveland. Damn, I should have thought of that for Marte.) Maybe we and Bronson were never meant to be, just maybe think of him once in a while.

Talk about getting off topic.

So...

I'm not saying we should feel bad for Bronson. But, you know what? I do anyway. I read his reaction to the trade and it made me sad. As I thought he would, he showed a lot of class (I hate that word, with it's meaningless connection to the yankee organization, much like how WCSG always points out how hard it's become to listen to "Enter Sandman") in his departure. It was hard to read his words--saying how he just would've loved to be here, even if he had to come out of the bullpen. And how much he loved coming to Fenway, and the fans, and how he just thought he'd be here for a while.

I really don't know much about business. But it seems like common sense to keep a person like that on your side. Especially since, on top of all that other stuff, he helped win us a World Series, which is the ultimate goal.

I'd like to propose the following notion: Baseball is not a business. There, I proverbially said it. "Major League Baseball" is a business. The game played within that league is, obviously, baseball. But that doesn't make "baseball," as a whole, a business. If it was, we wouldn't go to the games, sit in the stands, cheer, boo, or write pages and pages about it. We wouldn't cry either of the two tear groups over it.

The difference between the Red Sox and Microsoft is that the stock we put into the Sox is emotional. Stockholders of a company get paid in actual currency when their favorite does well. We get something, good or bad, that can't be measured in loonies and twonies.

The "nerd" thing was cute at first. Theo came in here with a crapload of knowledge that a lot of other teams are still trying to figure out. But if you take it to the point where you're trading away David Ortiz for an infant because "in the past, babies born with large femurs have developed into great opposite field hitters," well, you're going to piss some people off.

The message Theo is sending is that even if I do fall in love with Wily Mo, and he takes us to another championship, and he says "I'll take less money to be here because I love it here so much," Theo will have no problem staring him in the face and saying, "Sorry, we found a guy with more potential. He's totally unproven, and you're the king of the town, but, sorry, business is business. Bye."

I want to like players and be able to grow attached without thinking that they're just going to be tossed out as soon as they have a bad month. I love seeing my team win because they had more heart than the team that was meticulously put together with computers. And I don't just blindly love every guy. Read my thoughts on Edgar Renteria. I just think there should be a lot of factors that go into building and maintaining a ballclub. It shouldn't all be based on stats, and projections that mean nothing.

If baseball were a business, the teams would just go strictly by stats, getting the exact player they need for each specific situation, and play the games in a big vacuum with no spectators. The winning front office at the end of each year would divide up their money, and have a little private party. The stockholders would get their checks in the mail.

And that's the way it looks to be leaning. The problem with doing everything by the book, and not considering players' or fans' feelings, is that the players will stop coming to your team, and the fans will stop coming to your park.

Eventually. People like me and you--a person who cares enough about the Red Sox to go searching the internet to find other fans' opinions on a transaction--will always be there. But we're getting old. Young kids don't care about baseball. They're too busy having sex with their teachers and thinking there's something independent about indie rock. So what these teams are doing is playing a dangerous game, stretching every dollar out of our loyalty. They seem to want to win so that they can make more money, not to make us happy--which should be their number one job. They didn't stop to consider the fact that some people would rather see someone they've grown attached to.

Theo proved me wrong with Nomar. But that was in a situation where something needed to be done right away, he made the call, and we saw immediate results. (Although had Dave Roberts eaten one less Wheatie on the morning of his fateful steal, who knows what crazy alternate universe we'd all be living in.)

That was the old Theo, though. I am starting to think that when he left, he was buried in the old Micmac burial ground. Once they're in there, you have to leave 'em there. You can dig 'em up, but they won't be the same.

The thing is, even if he "proves me wrong" with the on-field results of this trade, I'll still be kind of pissed at how this all went down, and what it really means for the future of the Red Sox.