Will They Take It?

Until last weekend, I didn’t have much hope for the Red Sox’s search for a new President of Baseball Operations. If the general reportage is to be trusted, there were at about a half-dozen potential candidates that opted out of the search on account of Boston’s apparent instability in the front office. If that’s true, it’s sort of ridiculous (they’re still the Red Sox, come on), but at least it’s representative of the general stink around here.

For the first time in a long time, the Red Sox need something new and don’t exactly know what. They’ve changed leaders, but, you have to go back to Theo Epstein’s hiring to find a time when the job was truly, utterly up for grabs. Ben Cherington came from Theo, and Dave Dombrowski was in Cherington’s chair before the funeral meats went cold. Bloom was organic enough, but his hiring was in response to a new need, to trade Mookie Betts and save money for a few years while not being a laughingstock. Bloom got it half right, which wasn’t good enough, and now the Sox have been grasping about for a new leader, utterly directionless.

Then the Marlins fucked Ng over, demoting her to second in command for the sin of getting the fucking Marlins to the playoffs, and everything changed. With Ng, the Sox can solve several problems at once, the single most important of which is hiring the most capable person for the job. Ng’s success in Miami speaks for itself, and Miami screwing over its talent is nothing new, nor is the Sox capitalizing on it, to which Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell and Hanley Ramirez can attest.

The second most important factor, but one that almost certainly appeals to the headline-seeking Henry, is to give Ng her highest-profile job yet. The great thing about this is that since she is by far the most qualified person for the job it’s all added PR value, and John Henry loves nothing more than added PR value. Smithers Kennedy would be beside himself.

The third most important factor is that, as a graduate of the University of Chicago, I would like to have something nice to say about the college, and I don’t get a chance that often. The degree to which the school’s reputation comes down to whether Nate Silver is tweeting well or not is uncomfortable, and Ng would provide a nice backstop for me.

But seriously, it’s all so simple, and so unexpected, that I wouldn’t be surprised if it all comes together pretty quickly. It probably won’t, but it could, and it would make everyone’s life easier, even the haters, whose worst selves would be activated and against whom we’d have to go to war, but the Red Sox would be relevant again in ways they can control. Wouldn’t it be nice to feel something?