Boston Red Sox Memories: Potential pitching greatness derailed

The Boston Red Sox have had their share of promising careers shortened with injuries and personal issues.  A few pitchers that I will now look at.

The Red Sox have never been known for being able to cultivate pitching talent. Seemingly whenever they have world-class homegrown talent in the system something goes awry. This isn’t a recent occurrence and sadly is a part of Boston’s deep history.

Attaining the highest strata of your profession is a remarkable achievement and worthy of adulation be it baseball or physics, but this is baseball and not M.I.T. The weeding-out process in professional baseball shatters many dreams especially among the draft picks that are in double-digit rounds.

Getting to “The Show” is an arduous task and that is just the first phase. The second phase is remaining in the majors. The benefits package would make even our bloated Congress envious. The fiscal reward is well noted as even journeyman players and rewarded with low seven-figure contracts.

For the élite players, the compensation could become multi-generational as inherited wealth is passed down like the scions of the industrialist of the Gilded Age still wallowing in century-old trust funds.

Within baseball history is the litter of failure: Failure of incompetence, health, or misappropriation of talent. Sometimes it is a perfect storm that encompasses all three that derail great promise and demote an expected bright career into a dustbin. The Red Sox have – like every team in every sport – had their share and here are a few of my selections and just pitchers who had caught my attention.