Red Sox Skip Pesky Funeral

[Gringo]

The front office had busses available for players and family to drive up to Swampscott, but only Papi, Buchholz, Padilla and Salty showed up.

 

I'm at a loss for words.

 

http://bostonherald.com/track/inside_track/view.bg?articleid=1061155131&format=comments&cnum=1

[Emmz]

Just another nothing story to get the fans more riled up about basically nothing. It's as, if not more, pathetic than the product on the field.

[Gringo]

I'd say it's a something story when the front office provides a fleet of busses for players and their families, and only 4 of them show up!

 

It's a disgrace

[The Village Idiot]

A Red Sox legend. The only one of his kind?

 

Die in a fire, 2012 Red Sox (except for Papi, Salty, Padilla, and Clay).

 

These players really do deserve to finish in last place this season. No wonder I'm beyond caring. They do not deserve my care.

[Emmz]

Remind me of how morals relate to being an athlete. You're just feeding off of this BS and using it to take out your frustrations. Just like beer and chicken last year, this s***'s unreal.

[SCM33]

Remind me of how morals relate to being an athlete. You're just feeding off of this BS and using it to take out your frustrations. Just like beer and chicken last year, this s***'s unreal.

 

Emmz, there is no defending this.

 

When one of my brothers/sisters die......just about every single law enforcement agency as well as local fire and military personnel across the state show up. The wake takes upwards of 3-4 hours to get through and the street is lined in uniformed men and women in their class A's. We wear blue stripes across our badges for 30 days (like the one in my avatar) after ANY agency loses a brother/sister.

 

Its a joke that 4 players attended the funeral of a guy who gave his life to be a part of the Boston Redsox Organization.

 

Beckett can't show up for this, yet tries to recruit people to show up to his bowling event? Gross.

[RedSoxfanforlife305]

A damn shame

[Emmz]

It has nothing to do with the product on the field. You guys act like their personal lives are any of your business.

[RedSoxfanforlife305]

I don't even think anyone cares about what they're doing on the field, especially this year. When you get offered by the FO busses for players and families and only 4 players show up that is absolutely disgusting no matter how you put it. What a bunch of dickheads.

[Emmz]

Yeah, that totally makes it warranted to feed off of character assassination and other reactionary ********.

[Jacoby_Ellsbury]

It has nothing to do with the product on the field. You guys act like their personal lives are any of your business.

Welcome to talksox?

[Emmz]

Yeah, that basically sums it up.

[Youk Of The Nation]

Emmz, there is no defending this.

 

When one of my brothers/sisters die......just about every single law enforcement agency as well as local fire and military personnel across the state show up. The wake takes upwards of 3-4 hours to get through and the street is lined in uniformed men and women in their class A's. We wear blue stripes across our badges for 30 days (like the one in my avatar) after ANY agency loses a brother/sister.

 

Its a joke that 4 players attended the funeral of a guy who gave his life to be a part of the Boston Redsox Organization.

 

Beckett can't show up for this, yet tries to recruit people to show up to his bowling event? Gross.

 

 

To be fair, these are athletes. Generally egotistical, generally highly paid and almost never brimming with allegiance to anything. Law Enforcement is different. That truly is a brotherhood. I would be willing to bet that guys like Varitek, Wakefield, and Nomar showed up. That's just the kind of guys they are.

 

Personally, I would have gone, out of a sense of obligation. However I dislike the entire concept of wakes and funerals. It seems...I don't know, ghoulish to dress up a body and parade it around. Grief should be private, you know?

 

Eh, anyways, yeah I am surprised they did not attend, especially Pedroia and Lester, but I honestly don't think less of them for it.

[Emmz]

It's becoming more about the bullcrap and less about the team. We have people saying they don't care about the team on the field, but still feel the need to get on Talksox and remind us what pieces of s*** these guys are. It seems some people's sole purpose on Talksox is to do just that. It's getting out of control.

[Youk Of The Nation]

Yeah, we all know the team is awful and we all know that most of the players are dicks. I'd like to see more serious discussion on how to fix it and less reiterating of why the players are terrible.

[Emmz]

That's far too constructive.

[jacksonianmarch]

This wasn't an absentee red sox legend who made 1 trip to Fenway in 10 years. This was a guy who was around the team all the time, was at every spring training and personally befriended, it seemed, a lot of the players. It's really inexcusable that 21 players on the big league roster couldn't take a night off and pay last respects to a guy who helped build the sox into what they are.

[Youk Of The Nation]

I think it's unfair to expect it. Everyone grieves in their own way. Some people don't like funerals. Some people prefer staying home and reflecting in solitude on the condition of human existence. Other people like to get pants-shittingly drunk and tell lewd stories about the deceased. Some people go rock climbing.

 

Then, to top it off, there are people who don't care. Yeah, Pesky was a part of the Red Sox culture and organization, but some guys might not know him well. How many times has Nick Punto met and enjoyed time with Pesky? How about Podsednik?

 

Other people might just not care. Maybe Pedroia didn't like Pesky? Maybe Pesky was a jerk to him. (Unlikely, I know). Maybe Pedroia, as I said before, loved the guy but doesn't like funerals. We shouldn't condemn these guys for not going to a funeral service unless we know exactly why they chose not to, unless we know their personal reasons for doing so. And since we can't know those reasons, calling them terrible people for staying home is ridiculous.

[Youk Of The Nation]

I would like to state, for the record, that when I die I do not want my body preserved with chemicals or dressed and made up for viewing. No wake, no funeral. I want to be cremated within a day or two of death, or buried in a plain wooden box in the woods with no preservation, to be absorbed back into nature. Everyone who cared about me can have a party where they remember me and tell stories about me, and all of my ex girlfriends can get together with my wife at the party and they can talk about how I was the best they ever had, and maybe they can make out with each other a little, and everyone can watch some Star Trek in my memory.

 

What I don't want is to be in full rigor, dusted with blush and dressed in a suit I would never be caught dead in (badumchh), lying in an open casket while people file by and talk to my corpse.

[YAZMAN]

This wasn't an absentee red sox legend who made 1 trip to Fenway in 10 years. This was a guy who was around the team all the time, was at every spring training and personally befriended, it seemed, a lot of the players. It's really inexcusable that 21 players on the big league roster couldn't take a night off and pay last respects to a guy who helped build the sox into what they are.

 

The Yankees would have had him lying in state in monument park for an entire homestand.

[YAZMAN]

And it's too bad there is so little real communication in the organization at this point. The FO could have asked who wanted to attend, then made appropriate accommodations for whatever wound up being the size the players' delegation.

 

But that would have been too easy.

 

Don't worry, Lucchino is keeping his eye on everything.

[example1]

It is slightly sad that guys like Pedroia didn't attend, but my philosophy is that you honor people while they are alive. Friendship, honesty, connection, etc., the implication of this story--no, of the hyping around this story--is that the Sox players are such horrible people that they don't even care when someone dies. First, that's absurd. Second, it is only possible because the team sucks and fans already have drawn conclusions about the character of these guys.

 

I wish the team had more people who had traditional leadership qualities; specifically, that higher level of leadership where actions are exemplary on AND off the field. Going to a funeral when your organization implies that a showing from players is important is just something you should do, but overall this is an overblown smearing piece that only piles on a team that is at its lowest point in many years. I'm with Emmz here, for the most part.

[example1]

And it's too bad there is so little real communication in the organization at this point. The FO could have asked who wanted to attend, then made appropriate accommodations for whatever wound up being the size the players' delegation.

 

But that would have been too easy.

 

Don't worry, Lucchino is keeping his eye on everything.

 

I had the same thought. Which business gets multiple busses without doing an RSVP system. I suspect plenty of people in the organization took advantage.

[SoxSport]

Maybe the mistake made was in having busses ready to transport the troops, as if it was a must-attend event.

[SoxSport]

The Yankees would have had him lying in state in monument park for an entire homestand.

 

Whatever the Yankees did, it would have been private and not criticized in the media.

 

The Yankees don't get a lot of media criticism--in case you haven't noticed. The Red Sea parts for the biggest media market.

[a700hitter]

Another black eye for the organization. The planning as usual was botched. All someone needed to do (probably the Traveling Secretary) was to go to the clubhouse and ask for a show of hands. Just more 2012 incompetence and dysfunction.

[jung]

The busses were secured for the use of office personnel and their families and were made available for the players but not specifically secured for the players.

 

If the Sox did "request" that the players attend, then that may be where they erred. Deciding to go or not go to a funeral is a very personal affair. If I were a player I am not sure I would have trusted Sox Management to have left the funeral alone as far as efforts to spin player attendance ala' "one big together Sox family". Who knows what the Sox as an organization would have done....maybe nothing. The point is I could see players being a bit off put by a request from this Red Sox organization that they attend, especially in the case of younger players and a guy, Johny Pesky that maybe some of them hardy knew.

 

Normally I would say that attending a funeral is such a personal decision that no outside influences likely had an impact. However only four attending leads me to think that the request itself may have had a negative impact on the player turnout. As much as I respect Johny Pesky for what he meant to the Red Sox beyond the 2012 team or this John Henry ownership era either there is nothing in my view that we can take from their lack of attendance or maybe the request from the organization that players attend had a negative impact on their actual turnout.

[SoxSport]

The busses were secured for the use of office personnel and their families and were made available for the players but not specifically secured for the players.

 

 

Sounds reasonable. Also an opportunity for the media to twist the facts a bit and make a non-story into a story.

[ibot2much]

The mention of busses is totally ridiculous. The story is that 4 players showed up. The why and how are not important, just the who and the what since the story appeared on the "gossip" page. Who was there is the essence of that page.

 

The gossip women drew their own conclusions as people will. People here will draw their own conclusions....that is what gossip columns and message boards are for. You don't have to agree with or like other people's conclusions.

[a700hitter]

Sounds reasonable. Also an opportunity for the media to twist the facts a bit and make a non-story into a story.

If this team was competitive not have to write a story like this. On the field, this team gives the press nothing to work with, hence the rumors and negative stories. The organization deserves all the negative press and black eyes that the media can dish out, but they should have had the discretion not to involve the Pesky funeral.