So I was out for the afternoon.
I came home at around 7:30 and, of course, dashed up to see any updates on the Santana trades. I checked my default for news, Extra Bases, and saw only an earlier update on Gagne's arbitration offer. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I decided, just to be on the safe side, to check the Sox' official site.
Then I screamed.
When I saw the headline "Report: Ellsbury offered for Santana", I full-out screamed. Not a scream of excitement, or joy, or anything else. It was a mixture of terror and full-out-freak-out. My nightmare about Phil Hughes being added to the Yankees' offer had come true: while the Yankees raised the stakes, the Sox anted up and added Ellsbury.
I know it's pathetic, but I think I'm going to hurl.
I've been a big baseball fan since '03, just before I turned 10, when my brother started little league. But I wasn't completely immersed--obsessed--until late August, when I watched games nightly for two weeks with my grandfathe, who was a catcher through his college years, and probably knows more about the strategies behind baseball than anyone I know. My family was spending the two weeks with my grandparents on the Cape. I got 100% sucked into it, whereas since '04 I have watched games more or less just to see if they won or not.
A couple days after we returned home, I went with my dad, brother, and a friend to Fenway. It was September 2, the day after Clay Buchholz threw his no-hitter. That was also the day Jacoby hit his first major league home run. I was so happy, and when I got home, I was flipping through that program thing and realized he was "pretty cute". Honestly, that's what I thought. So I looked him up on Google, since I'd only really heard of him when he came up in late June. I wanted to "know" him more.
I pretty much fell in love with him.
Not real love, obviously, but he was my immediate favorite. His looks helped, of course, but I loved that he was so young. He was nearly a decade older than I was (well, is nearly a decade older than I am), but he was so young compared to my previous favorites--Manny, Lowell, and he was younger than even Papelbon--that I understood more what he felt like; we both emerged into the Majors around the same time.
As he played throughout September and posted such amazing statistics, I (who has always loved the idea of baseball being centered around numbers) was completely enthralled. And when he played so spectacularly in the postseason, I loved it. I had been thinking, sort of casually, about what I'd like to do with my life--and I decided I either wanted to be a reporter on the Sox or work with the players as some sort of coach. I wanted to interact with the players, and not just because of my baseball-crush on Jacoby, although that did definitely help. I was so deeply in love with baseball that I was like a giddy girl with her first serious boyfriend: already framing the rest of my life around it.
When Theo told the Twins a week or so ago that he was untouchable, I thought, Of course, why would you ever trade him? He's the future of the Red Sox. He doesn't have much experience in the majors, but he's played so well his entire life that you can't NOT expect him to be a great player. I still think that. But apparently, Theo doesn't.
Pitching wins championships. But players like Jacoby win fans' affection. Honestly, it sounds shallow, but if Jacoby is traded--I won't be as emotionally into baseball. Into the Sox. And I've become so dependent on it--on baseball--since August that I have no idea how that would work out.
There are other players. There are other good-looking center fielders. There are other prospects. They will be closer and closer to my age for the next ten years. But there will never, ever be another Jacoby Ellsbury for me.
So please, Theo. Santana would help us win. But so will Ellsbury. Santana is a free agent at the end of 2008. If he just stays with the Twins for next season, we can outbid the Yankees and have Santana, Ellsbury, AND Lester, and maybe Coco as well.
Please. For the sake of a little girl's happiness, please, Mr. Epstein. Don't trade him.
