After all these years, it’s clearer than ever that both Don Orsillo and Red Sox fans deserved better.
Over the weekend, two former staples of Red Sox baseball returned to Fenway. To be honest, I didn’t really think much about it going into the series. Neither of them were going to take the field, as Xander Bogaerts is injured and Don Orsillo is in the booth, and the 2024 Red Sox have their own long list of compelling focal points. This wasn’t going to be a Mookie Betts situation from last year.
However, on Sunday, Sean McAdam of MassLive posted a story touching on Orsillo’s legacy in Boston, and it sure reignited some sharp memories and emotions from the previous era of Red Sox baseball. When I first clicked, my guard was down, but then I read this passage captured and posted by Pod On Lansdowne and Over The Monster’s own Liam Fennessy. It instantly transported me back to 2015, where a flood of anger and, with nine years of distance, nostalgia rushed through my mind and soul.
Those comments are poignant on multiple levels! For Orsillo, it underscores how much the decision to fire him still stings, particularly when he goes out of his way to distinguish his feelings towards the other local sports teams. The old flames are still burning inside him when pressed on the issue. And you know what? I think he’s fully justified to feel this way!
Don Orsillo was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, spent much of his youth in New Hampshire, and has deep ties to the Red Sox, both as a (former) fan and a broadcaster. His dream was to be the baseball voice of New England for a generation, and he was over 99 percent of the way there when everything he built his life towards was suddenly and shockingly taken away. In some ways, I’m not sure it’s reasonable to ever expect a person to get over that. He invested his life into that dream, and then it was ruined.
We still don’t know the exact details of everything that went down, which is both maddening and astounding almost a decade later, but we do have context clues. At the time of Orsillo’s departure, the Red Sox were finishing up their first stint of three last place finishes in four years (sound familiar?), and the enormous local TV ratings the club was known for in the first decade of the century began to slip. How could they not, given the towering peaks from which they were descending?
During this time, ownership was still invested in the day to day happenings of the product, and absent of our knowledge of any other turbulent factors, we can only assume they made a horrendous miscalculation. They concluded that at least part of the reason their ratings were declining was because of the booth. Maybe Don and Jerry weren’t doing as good of a job as they used to? Maybe their act had gotten stale? Maybe they saw the enormous TV ratings Canada was producing for the division rival Blue Jays in the weeks leading up to Orsillo’s firing, and they put on the green eye shade. Either way, we still don’t know the exact chain of events. All we do know is they made an awful and shortsighted decision, the aftershocks of which continue to this day.
The other reason this hurts him so bad is the reason it’s also so poignant for all of us, and it’s beautifully expressed by Orsillo himself in this next passage from McAdam’s piece.
Don Orsillo was more than just a Red Sox broadcaster; he was the voice in our homes during the greatest run of Boston baseball any of us are likely to ever experience. He and Jerry Remy were the the pieces that connected us all, and after Remy’s passing, Orsillo should have been the connecting piece that tied us back to that most glorious era of baseball for years to come. He should have been our constant.
In a world where everything is changing from the way we consume media, to the way we work, to the structure of our society — these constants are more valuable than ever. Orsillo would have been one, an instant and seamless connection back to the height the Red Sox phenomenon in New England, and easy escape tying back to a time where it felt like the Red Sox mattered more than anything else in the world.
Sharpening this feeling is the incredible turnover, ugly breakups, and bad luck that’s surrounded the franchise for the better part of 15 years now. From the way ownership burned bridges with Terry Francona, to the entire Mookie Betts saga, to never offering Xander Bogaerts a reasonable contract he clearly would have taken, to letting the Jon Lester situation get to the point where you traded and then didn’t re-sign him the following winter. From the constant swings in the front office, to getting robbed of seeing the back end of Dusting Pedroia’s (what would have been) Hall of Fame career. The fan experience desperately needed someone to hold our hand through the upheaval.
Instead, Orsillo not only never got the chance to be the North Star of the Red Sox world, but his departure became part of, and even exacerbated the chaos and turnover. We’re now in a place where nothing is as it was with the Red Sox even ten years ago. All the players are different (Rafael Devers is the longest tenured Red Sox player, and he arrived in 2017. Everybody else has been on the team for less than five years), the entire front office is different (two times cycled over), and now, even the entire booth is different.
Some of this is just life. Change is the only constant. Oftentimes, change is good. For the Red Sox, they need the change this next wave of young players will provide, giving us all a refreshing renewal.
But still, we’re nearly a decade removed from the decision to remove Orsillo from the Red Sox experience and it still looks as horrible as ever. He should have retired one of the most beloved team announcers in baseball history. Given his age, he might have called Red Sox baseball for 40 years, connecting so many generations of Boston fans through everything we’ve seen, and everything we’re going to see in the Mayer, Anthony and Teel era. Who knows how many more unforgettable moments there would have been?
The Red Sox destroyed Orsillo’s dream. He got screwed! We got screwed! And for no good reason. That will, forever, be the hardest part to live with.
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