The All-Decade Team
The end of “The Zeroes” (I don’t really care for the word “aughts”) has quietly crept upon us. While this decade seems to have flown by faster than shit through a goose, there was some memorable baseball played.
From my perspective, the story of the decade was the renaissance of the Boston Red Sox. I tried to put my objective hat and think about this as someone from Kansas City or Houston or Pittsburgh would think about it, and I still have to say that our boys stole the fucking show. Think about it this way, if it was the Cubbies who banged out two World Series championships, we’d still be voting for them, right?
I won’t spend too much time giving the local franchise a well-deserved reach-around for their new found glory, as it’s been done by many writers, most of whom are better at this than I am. I mean, I’d be competing with Stephen King, for Chrissakes.
What I plan on doing is giving you my picks for the All-Decade Team. It’s something I haven’t given a whole lot of thought to as of yet, so even I’m interested to see how the lineup will shake out. The one downside to this exercise: I can think of at least two Yankees, and possibly two more, that will likely be on it.
My choices will be taking in consideration performance from 2000-2009 only. Yeah, I know, the decade really begins in 2001, most of these “best of ” lists start at the “00″ year, and I’m a sucker for conformity. The picks will be presented in this format:
C:
1B:
2B:
3B:
SS:
LF:
CF:
RF:
DH:
LHP:
RHP:
CL:
My first pick will come tomorrow. As always, feel free to chime in and tell me why I’m full of shit.
C: Posada
1B: Pujols
2B: Kent
3B: A-Rod
SS: Jeter
LF: Manny
CF: Beltran
RF: Vlad
DH: Ortiz
LHP: Johnson
RHP: Martinez
CL: Rivera
YOU’VE RUINED IT FOR EVERYONE!
Just kidding. Yeah, it will look similar to that. But, I can already see at least two where we disagree…
That’s probably the list right there, sox fan. Not sure about Posada, but then again, I can’t think of another catcher. Varitek? Probably not. Mauer? Too early, right? Pudge Rodriguez? Might be a bit better than Posada.
It would be interesting to have a reverse All-Decade Team for the Sox. The worst of the Aughts. (I like Aughts, it reminds me of handlebar mustaches and big-wheeled bicycles).