In March of 2004, the Yankees made their only spring training visit to City of Palms Park in Fort Myers. Fans wrapped from Broadway onto Edison three hours before first pitch. Scalpers scored $200 a ticket. The Red Sox issued a commemorative pin, and fans wore shirts with slogans like, "Zimmer had it Coming."
In the visiting dugout, a scrum 12 reporters deep surrounded newest Yankee Alex Rodriguez, who had spurned the Red Sox that winter. Between A-Rod's arrival and the smoldering burn marks from an epic American League Championship Series, the Red Sox resided at the center of the sporting universe.
"Game 7 boys!" Kevin Millar yelled during batting practice. "Rematch! Let's go!"
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SIGN UP HERE The Red Sox dominated Boston like no other team. Only a month earlier, the Patriots had won the second Super Bowl of the Tom Brady Era, and it merely felt like an appetizer. Nothing could matter more than the Red Sox, not with A-Rod and Curt Schilling and Aaron Bleeping Boone and 86 years of pain and another impossibly tragic loss -- and definitely not with the thought of doing it all again in the fall.
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"Hopefully there will be another Game 7," Yankees captain Derek Jeter said. "That means we'll be there, too."
It turns out, of course, that Jeter should've been careful what he wished for, but in that moment, the Red Sox simply owned Boston. Every newspaper and TV station in New England covered the game. I was there, and it felt like the playoffs. The old press box couldn't even accommodate all of the Yankees writers.
Fast forward 19 years to Tuesday. The Red Sox conducted their first official interviews of the spring. Chaim Bloom and Alex Cora took questions at the picnic tables.
In attendance were reporters from four print/online outlets and one TV station, as well as WBZ radio's indefatigable Jonny Miller. Sean McAdam of the Boston Sports Journal was there, and he noted the sparse turnout on Twitter.
"If that doesn't greatly concern the Red Sox," he wrote, "it should."
Coming on the heels of a surreal Winter Weekend, when many fed-up fans paid over $100 to heckle John Henry and Bloom, the Red Sox must know they face a serious reckoning. Right?
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I've covered this team for 25 years and I've never seen this toxic mix of hostility, apathy, and disinterest. The 2001 team that fought on planes and imploded in September was unlikeable, but the Red Sox still ruled. The 2011 team that collapsed while pitchers pounded beers in the clubhouse made fans viscerally furious, and Bobby Valentine didn't help in 2012, but we gave the bearded Boston Strong group of 2013 a chance and by the time they raised a trophy that fall, they had long ago won over the city.
This is different and it should scare the hell out of Henry, Tom Werner, and Sam Kennedy. Last year, fans arrived noticeably late to games, with the stands often half empty until the fifth inning. The first row of the press box, once jammed shoulder to shoulder with reporters, often had a dozen empty seats. Postgame press conferences that used to be recorded by multiple TV stations might only be serviced by a single NESN camera. Truck Day came and went as little more than a punchline.
In today's attention economy, news organizations go where the interest is, and it's not Fort Myers. Even with additional reporters expected on hand for Wednesday's official arrival of pitchers and catchers, we're not exactly looking at a media blitzkrieg.
The reason is obvious: Many fans don't believe in the team or its direction. The Red Sox have waved goodbye to a pair of foundational homegrown stars in Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts in the last three years, and they've replaced them with flea market finds and spackle.
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It may turn out that players like Justin Turner and Adam Duvall help the Red Sox contend, but there's little point in fans getting attached to the former at age 38 or the latter on a one-year deal. The Red Sox have reached this awful dead zone between the arrival of the prospects they're counting on to be impact players, and the veteran stopgaps they need to shuttle through Fenway Park like seasonal workers just to field a team.
It turns out fans care about more than laundry. They want to root for players they've watched grow. They want continuity. They're not interested in re-learning the roster every spring while baseball ops says churn baby, churn. It's why everyone breathed a cautious sigh of relief following Rafael Devers' massive extension.
Devers is just one player, however, and the Red Sox are just one team in a market that boasts the best clubs in the NHL and NBA, as well as a football behemoth that makes news every time it hires one of the coach's friends. The Red Sox are no longer an automatic draw.
Never has 2004 felt so long ago. The passion that spring was fueled by dreams of the impossible. Four World Series titles sated that hunger, and five last-place finishes have replaced it with skepticism.
The days of the Red Sox ruling Boston are over. Now they're jockeying for attention like everyone else, and some days it feels like they're the only ones who don't know it.
