Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past three-or-so weeks, you are well aware of the fact that David Price unreasonably verbally attacked Hall of Famer and NESN analyst Dennis Eckersley back in early July on a team flight.
It’s well known that the majority of the Red Sox clubhouse dislikes Eckersley because he’s apparently too harsh on individual players with his criticism. Price and a handful of teammates decided to virtually gang up on Eckersley as he was walking down the aisle of the plane, leaving Eck totally defenseless. When Price sarcastically cried out, “Here he is — the greatest pitcher who ever lived! This game is easy for him! … Get the fuck out of here!”, his teammates surrounding him promptly applauded. Nobody stepped in as a chunk of this Red Sox team got a kick out of a veteran teammate bullying an innocent broadcaster just trying to make his way to his seat.
That leaves us the question: who here is to blame? The truth is, you can’t pin this on just one single person or a certain group of people. It’s everybody’s fault in some way for allowing this to happen and the following actions, or the lack thereof, that took place between the team and Eckersley.
Let’s look at each culprit and dig deeper into their role in this embarrassing fiasco, shall we?
Let us begin with none other than John Farrell, AKA Manager John. His personal role in this dates back to another one of Price’s temper tantrums back in New York after a start against the Yankees where he lashed out at three separate Red Sox beat writers publicly in the clubhouse. It’s Price’s own fault for having no self control, but Farrell’s place in that situation was how he responded to everything. He most notably said that accountability is a “two-way street”. Yes, that’s true. Very true, actually. That doesn’t make what your $217 million pitcher did was right, though, John.
That then leads us to the Price and Eck debacle. Price had no reason to confront Eckersley the way he did in front of the entire team. Eckersley tells it like it is while the Red Sox collectively take it way too personally instead of looking in the mirror and wondering how they can fix what they did wrong on the field. If anybody understands the game of baseball, it’s Dennis freaking Eckersley. Anyways, this is a perfect scenario for Farrell’s two-way street quote to come into play. Nobody within the organization has reportedly apologized to Eckersley; Farrell said that the situation has been “handled internally”. What? Where’s the accountability in a situation that screams accountability?! This is a unique situation that needs to be taken seriously. What Price did was unacceptable and downright indefensible. It’s been nearly a month and Eck has gotten no apology from anybody. Have no fear, though, everything has been handled internally! Everything is awesome!!
Remember when Dave Dombrowski was asked about Farrell’s job security and Dombrowski responded with the likes of, “he’s a players manager”? We get to see that whole “players manager” label firsthand in this situation. Farrell is pretty blatantly buddy-buddy with Price and handpicked players and doesn’t have the balls to tell them what’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong. He’s okay with his team constantly listening to what the outside is saying about them when just fourty-five minutes down the road, Bill Belichick preaches to his roster to “ignore the noise”. Farrell is perfectly fine with his players plotting to humiliate Dennis Eckersley, who has been through hell and back on and off the field for his entire life. To call that pathetic would be a severe understatement.
Now, let’s look at David Price himself and where he stands in this. Obviously, what he did was disgusting and wholeheartedly unnecessary on so many levels. Like, dude, just…why? Who in their right mind would think it’s okay to act like a middle schooler and publicly embarrass somebody like that? We get that he doesn’t like it here in Boston, but that’s no excuse to let your pent up anger and frustration out on a target like that.
This Red Sox team is very young from top to bottom, with guys like Benintendi, Betts, Bogaerts, Vazquez, Marrero, the majority of the bullpen and now Devers to name a few, headlining this 2017 roster. This is a young team who is just learning their way around this game. What kind of a lesson is a veteran pitcher like Price teaching them? He’s making it seem like what he’s frequently doing is okay. It’s totally fine to lash out like a child at a reporter when you don’t agree with what they said instead of speaking to them one-on-one in private and not making a putrid, national scene.
Price is widely recognized and praised for being one of the best teammates in all of baseball, by former and current fellow ballplayers alike. He’s always been an easy guy to talk to and ask questions to. He’s obviously a standup guy and isn’t uptight. Although, something is different here in Boston. He wants to get out of here, and apparently this is his way of telling the Red Sox just that. By making a fool out of himself for no good reason at all. Price didn’t do anything like this last season when he had a fairly disappointing first year in Boston. Now, in 2017, he’s surpassed everyone’s light expectations coming off of that elbow scare and has pitched as well as he has while donning a Red Sox uniform. Only now is he acting like a gutless dirtbag to the media. It just does not add up.
The team itself plays a part in this act as well, unfortunately. The report acknowledges that unnamed Red Sox players applauded when Price shouted at Eckersley. Many are curious to know which players did in fact clap, as am I, but the mere fact that anybody on this team supported Price’s scene is disappointing. Knowing that nobody stepped in to stop or even question Price’s wrongdoing is unsettling.
This is, of course, an overall young team, and that’s understandable. I wouldn’t expect a guy like Benintendi or Betts or who have you to step in and do something. I would expect a guy like, say, Pedroia or maybe Sale or Hanley Ramirez to at least say or do something as it’s going down. Pedroia almost seems like an outsider this season, or something along those lines. He’s one of the very few players on this sensitive team with balls and who possesses a leadership mentality. That should not mean that Pedey should feel like he can’t step in and put his teammates in line when something like this happens. Pedroia has dealt with a lot of criticism since the Manny Machado incident back in April when he seemingly threw his team under the bus when Matt Barnes threw at Machado a day after the slide occurred. This team obviously doesn’t have a true leader, and that’s seriously concerning.
Red Sox ownership has a Farrell-esque role in this, too. Like Manager John, ownership needs to step in and talk to Price about this. Somebody with authority needs to get it through Price’s brain that his actions are completely unacceptable and widely frowned upon. Ownership are the ones paying him $31 million a year. They shouldn’t feel like they can’t approach their star pitcher and lay down the law once and for all. In fact, they kind of can’t feel that way. They are literally the people who employ him, and they won’t even at least attempt to talk to him, or the entire team, for that matter, about this.
A situation like this needs to be addressed and an apology needs to be issued. The funny thing is, though, they’ve waited too long to apologize to Eckersley, so now the team has completely played themselves and if they issued a formal apology to Eck, say today, it’d look totally fake and meaningless. Congratulations, guys. Huge round of applause for being too afraid to act like the top dog you are and failing to inform your roster in any form that ganging up on a nationally respected Hall of Famer is actually bad.
Last but not least, I unfortunately have to include Eckersley in this conversation and his place in this tsunami. I’ve actually seen a few Twitter folk say that they hate Eck and think he’s too hard on the players. To that, I respond with: grow up. Eckersley is the best thing to happen to NESN since the Orsillo and Remy days. Eck is the only person at NESN who isn’t afraid to tell it like they see it, criticize players when they make a mistake and he’s the lone person there with any form of personality. Now, when Eck isn’t in the booth, I’ll typically put my headphones on and listen to music because the broadcast is so insufferable. Albeit, when Eck is in the booth, I’ve got the volume up so I can hear his insight while simultaneously having a handful of chuckles throughout the game because he truly livens up a game no matter the score.
Eck did nothing wrong here. For as long as he’s been involved in television, he’s called it as he sees it. Just like a proper analyst should do. Fans want to hear a former player’s insight on a certain play because most likely, that former player has been in a situation like the one that’s just occurred on the field and we want to hear their opinion. Not only does the viewer want to hear what he has to say, but the players on the field themselves should, too. If Eck says you did something wrong, you definitely did something wrong. As an athlete, you should want to fix that mistake so it doesn’t happen again. Instead, this particular team can’t take such criticism and makes Eck out to be the bully, when in reality, they’re the bullies here.
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