According to ESPN, The Red Sox and NFL have Agreed to a $77.050 billion contract which….

For over thirty years, I have owned Red Sox season tickets. I share two lower grandstand seats on the third base side with Bob Purdy, a lifelong friend. Each year, in December, we get together at one of our favorite bars, have martinis, and write out checks for the games. Then, in March, we would get together again (same bar, same martinis) to divide out the tickets for our weekday schedule, which usually included 48 games.

This year, not so much. We reconnected in the same bar, shared the same martinis, but couldn’t decide whether to part with $5,606 once more. Or do we bid farewell to something we loved a lot in the past but no longer as much?

A few weeks ago, Bob remarked, “My heart says yes, but my analytical brain says no.” I agreed. On either side of the should-I-stay-or-should-I-go debate, we could both argue. But it might feel more like a chore than a pleasure to trudge into games when the club is struggling, as it has lately. Would it be considered masochism to fork out the cash for the 2024 season?

Following three last-place Eastern Division finishes in the previous four years, this epic indecision occurs. And this has been the unsatisfied winter for the Red Sox Nation. The team has been unable to hang on to its franchise stars, Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts, and they let Nathan Eovaldi to move to Texas. This has resulted in a persistent, simmering ill blood between the fans and the ownership.

John L. Rossi recently said, “I honestly think that baseball itself, not just the Red Sox, has worked hard to become irrelevant,” in a couple of the Red Sox Facebook groups in which I participate. The Red Sox are the most expensive team in Major League Baseball, thus he points out that high ticket costs “keep working families from building a relationship with the team” and that the ownership “seems to take the fan base for granted.”