The Curse of the Bob-ino

Towards the end of July, Boston Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan ran a series of photo essays on the Globe website about some of the core Red Sox players (and, presumably, some of his favorites). There were profiles of David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Trot Nixon, Jason Varitek, Tim Wakefield, Terry Francona, and others.

As far as I can tell, the essays are no longer on www.boston.com/sports, otherwise I'd provide links.

ANYWAY -- it was about this time that three of those players -- Nixon, Varitek and Wakefield -- suffered apparently serious injuries and will be lost for about a month, if not the rest of the season.

This was a severe blow to the Sox for obvious reasons -- Varitek is the team captain and all-star catcher, Wakefield is the senior man on the team, and Nixon has been with the organization the longest. All of them are valuable performers in their own right, and their loss is compounded by the fact that it came too late (either shortly before or right after) the 7/31 trading deadline, so Theo et al weren't able to make any moves to bolster the roster.

The Sox have struggled in August and have had several problems throughout the season, but this didn't help.

Coincidence? We'll see. Maybe Dan Shaughnessy will have to write another book...