Red Sox 2011: a Whimsical Autopsy

Now you can follow the entire season, month by month, through humorous essays, written as events unfolded, which reveal the root causes as the 2011 Red Sox folded. The 2011 season for the Boston Red Sox began with great optimism, peaked with confidence, and collapsed with a great thud. The Red Sox pieces could never be put together again once Theo Epstein?s Humpty Dumpty team fell off its perch. These essays about the hullabaloo over the eggshell catastrophe serve as a whimsical autopsy. William Russo traces the team from its spring training, through the rough start, to midseason recovery, to the inevitable final game loss, hanging by the thinnest thread, only to lose and to watch Tampa Bay come back from a 7 run deficit to win their game. This book does NOT discuss games to analyze the Sox, but looks at the stars to determine the truth. Red Sox stars did not shine in 2011, with one or two exceptions. Collecting his essays from MTR Media and Bleacher Report websites, Russo humorously follows the chronology of the decline and fall as it happens off the field. Starting with optimistic spring training where some thought the team would end up with 100 victories, each month of the season is concurrent to the events. Each of the major and minor events of the season is delineated with surgical wit, from visits in Anaheim with Tom Brady to the glorious success of Jacoby Ellsbury, and the vainglorious collapse in September. Yet, the seeds of destruction were there, and this author-cum-coroner saw them unfolding. The events are presented with the humor that draws between baseball and classic literature. Tales of the season may live as part of the folklore of Sox stories for generations to come. Long time professor of sports literature and writing at a college outside Boston, Dr. William Russo provides readers over 100 anecdotal essays, month-by-month, tongue-in-cheek, and with bilious humor. If you enjoyed Russo?s scathing humor in his works like Sex, Drugs, Sports and Whimsy, volume 1 and 2 as well as Rajon Rondo Superstar, you will enjoy reading and re-reading his take on tales, like Norse sagas, that become instant additions to the pantheon of Red Sox legends. This coroner?s report is filled with bloody cynicism, brain-dead corpses, and the always-entertaining Red Sox players finding out that being a zombie isn?t any fun.