Melville. Fred, I've been trying to pin down your writing style and it finally hit me. Billy Budd. Not quite Hawthorne but a distinct 1800's flair.
In the time before steamships, or then more frequently than now, a stroller along the docks of any considerable seaport would occasionally have his attention arrested by a group of bronzed mariners, man-of-war's men or merchant sailors in holiday attire, ashore on liberty. In certain instances they would flank, or like a bodyguard quite surround, some superior figure of their own class, moving along with them like Aldebaran among the lesser lights of his constellation. That signal object was the "Handsome Sailor" of the less prosaic time alike of the military and merchant navies. With no perceptible trace of the vainglorious about him, rather with the offhand unaffectedness of natural regality, he seemed to accept the spontaneous homage of his shipmates
Herman could throw down some hyperbolic analogies. Oh right..on topic. Not one to upset the baseball gods, but clearly this Red Sox team is infinitely superior to the sewer rats in the Bronx. Mercenary roger or no mercenary roger. They ain't got "IT"...not now. Not this year.