Theo in Mudville
WELCOME TO Mudville, Theo.
Ex-GM Theo Epstein is officially back with the Boston Red Sox, giving cranky fans an old bone to gnaw on -- which is better than no bone at all.
Grim is the word around here since October. Mighty Casey struck out -- and then some.
The Boston Red Sox were swept out of post-season play by the Chicago White Sox, who went on to become World Series champions. Epstein left Fenway in a gorilla suit and Sox owner John Henry in tears. Johnny Damon sheared his locks to join the New York Yankees. Then, the New England Patriots ended their season in a dreadful playoff game with the Denver Broncos.
Yes, it looked to be a long, cold, joyless winter in Mudville, Mass. Bronson Arroyo's new contract was the top sporting news of the week. And with holes still looming in the lineup, Sox fans were relieved that Arroyo wanted to stay, even though his singing is more consistent than his pitching. Meanwhile, the uninspiring Celtics and Bruins stand between January and Opening Day.
But, now Epstein is back, knocking Osama bin Laden to the secondary news status he deserves.
So many angles demand revisiting.
Did Epstein ever leave? What exactly is his new job? How can Sox president and CEO Larry Lucchino live with the humiliation that Epstein's front office reincarnation represents? And what about Scooter Libby? No, not the one in Washington, but the one in Boston: Dr. Charles Steinberg, Lucchino's sidekick and the Sox vice president of public affairs.
Around town, Steinberg is widely viewed as the source who planted the mean nuggets that initially caused Epstein to run in horror from not-so-friendly Fenway. Yet, in a July 2004 interview with Sportsfan Magazine, Steinberg likened the Fenway front office to a cozy candy company. ''We make three candy bars: Boston Red Sox, Theo's in charge of that; Fenway Park, Janet Marie Smith's in charge of that; and the fan experience. That's me. The three of us all do that under Larry Lucchino, who is an active participant in all."
Today's Fenway Bar is more than a little bitter-sweet.
Inside baseball, you say? The Boston sports industrial complex thrives on it, the more parochial the better. Upton Bell, the longtime sportscaster, ex-Patriots GM, and observer of local culture, compares Red Sox Nation -- Patriots Nation, too -- with the ''great walled-in cities of the Middle Ages." The Boston fan lives in a claustrophobic world, says Bell, amplified by sports radio hosts who ''talk about local anxiety day in and day out." Once their team is out of contention, says Bell, Boston fans pray for ''destruction of the team that goes on."
Wallowing in sports-induced pity is presumably preferable to facing lives measured out with coffee spoons, as T.S. Eliot famously described the mediocrity of daily existence. And for a long time, wallowing in self-pity was all the New England sports fan knew. Learning to love misfortune on the playing field was a treasured, if painful, legacy, passed from one sports generation to the next.
Then, after years of waiting for Godot, he arrived with three Super Bowl trophies and a World Series championship. New England tasted victory with the Sox and dynasty with the Pats. The Holy Grail was in their hands, then it was gone.
In recent months, the sports scene went from the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous-- especially on Yawkey Way. The Patriots overcame injuries and obstacles, then performed poorly in a playoff game. But the football team core remains strong. The Sox imploded on the field and in the front office, and no one has yet to put the pieces back together. (The
Sox fans heard the thrill of a familiar hunt: the old-fashioned pursuit of misery.
With requisite apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer:
''Oh, somewhere in this favored land, the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere and somewhere hearts are light.
And somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville -- call the Whiner Line and pout."
Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com. 
