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29ENTERPRISENEWS.COM AU G U S T 26, 2012
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INSIDE
PATRIOTS, HIGH SCHOOLS / 30BASEBALL / 31OUTDOORS, SCOREBOARD / 32
GONE-ZO
BASEBALL. . . . . . . . . . . . .MIKE FINE
PROFOOTBALL. . . . . . . . . . . . .
GLEN FARLEY
R E D S O X
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS� The Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers completed a nine-player deal on Saturday that sent, from left, Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Nick Punto from Boston to LosAngeles in exchange for first baseman James Loney, infielder Ivan DeJesus, Jr., pitcher Allen Webster and two players to be named later.
Cherington’s bold move toshake up Sox, pare payrollwith blockbuster deal willredefine Fenway franchise
BOSTON – It wasn’t like he rolledout of bed one day and decided tomake one of the more shockingtrades in baseball history.
No, Ben Cherington had plentyof time to think about the direction of the RedSox, and he didn’t like it.
“I think we recognized that we are not whowe want to be right now,”the GM said late Saturdayafternoon in a press confer-ence at Fenway Park. “It’sbeen a large enough sam-ple of performance goingback to last year that wefelt like, in order to be theteam we want to be on the
field, we needed to make more than cosmeticchanges.”
So Cherington went out and took a pick ax to
tunity to really reshape the roster, reshape theteam and we it was a difficult thing to do to tradeaway four players like this.”
Yet, “four players like this” we r e n ’t cutting it,and the Sox appeared to be hopelessly mired inmediocrity. Long before the trade happened, feel-ers had been spread.
“We talked tothe Dodgers allye a r, ” Cheringtonsaid. “I had talked toNed (GM Colletti)about (Kevin) Youk-ilis, so we’ve hadconsistent dialogueall year and at cer-tain points, that dia-logue picked up. Wetalked quite a bit before the (July 31 trade) dead-line.”
This is a new Red Sox team, one that’s nowbeing rebuilt before our eyes, smack-dab in themiddle of a pennant race. It’s just that Chering-ton and his bosses understood that it had to bedone.
He also understood that the big-money deals
a club badly in need of an overhaul.Not only did he unload Adrian Gonzalez,
Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford, along with NickPunto, but he also unloaded all but about $10million of their contracts – more than $260 mil-
lion – and that was the key to his thinking.“As we looked forward to this offseason, we
felt like the opportunity to build the team that weneed, that the fans deserve, that we want, re-quired more of a bold move to give us an oppor-
No panic, but Patsstill have work leftUgly loss to Bucspoints out holesto fill for Belichick
The Patriots look primedand ready for the startof the regular season.
Right.And the Red Sox look
poised to mount a playoff push.There is no need to begin
ushering name players out ofGillette Stadium, however.
There’s still hope for NewEngland’sboys off all.
Latelast Au-gust, thePa t r i o t swere deci-mated bythe De-troit Li-
ons, 34-10, in the third game ofthe preseason and historyshows that they reboundedfrom that rather well.
Flip back to 2004 andyou ’ll find that team went 1-3in the preseason and reboundedeven better.
Feel better now?The most positive develop-
ment to come out of the Patri-ots’ 30-28 preseason loss (it
wa s n ’t that close, folks) to theTampa Bay Buccaneers at Ray-mond James Stadium on Fridaynight was the fact that at notime during the game were thereplacement officials forced todraw chalk lines around To mBrady’s body.
At the outset of trainingcamp, Brady repeated his de-sire to play for years to come;forced to operate behind thisline on a permanent basis, the35-year-old quarterback wouldbe lucky to see 36.
As it is, he was lucky to see
Boxers shoulder Big Three chipConference title,but no playoffslast year still fuelBrockton’s fireBy John BotelhoENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER
BROCKTON – TheBrockton HighSchool footballteam won the Big
Three title in convincing fash-ion a year ago.
The Boxers, however, werefar from convinced that NewBedford deserved to get the
confer -ence’spostsea -son nod.
Brock -ton blast-ed bothof its Big
Three foes, Durfee and NewBedford, by a combined scoreof 80-36, including a 38-9blowout win over New Bed-ford, but because the Boxersfinished at 5-6, they wound upwatching the Whalers reachthe MIAA Div. 1 playoffs in-stead.
“It was really hard to see ateam that we had just slappedgo to the playoffs,” said cur-
rent Brockton High senior de-fensive back Micah Morel.
A conference rule stipulat-ed last season that any teamwhich finished under .500would not earn a postseasonberth if another team finishedat .500 or better.
The Boxers went 5-6, los-
ing to BC High, Xaverian, St.John’s Prep, Catholic Memori-al, Leominster and Bridgewa-ter-Raynham. Four of those sixlosses were to teams whichhad reached Super Bowls overthe past two seasons, and allare among the state’s best pro-g rams.
New Bedford, whichplayed one-win Silver Lakeand one-win Taunton, went onto lose to Needham, 42-14, inthe first round of the EMass.Div. 1 playoffs.
“That rule was changed af-ter last season,” said Boxers
MARC VASCONCELLOS/THE ENTERPRISE� Brockton High head football coach Peter Colombo watches over the Boxers’ p re s e a s o npractice on Friday at Marciano Stadium.
MORE� Local fans delightedwith Red Sox-Dodgerstrade / 1� LA brass bankingon mega-deal to win apennant / 31� Gonzalez homers infirst at-bat for Dodgers/ 31
WEB
See more photosfrom Brockton High’spreseason footballprepara tions.
E n t e r p r i s e n e w s. c o m
EXTRA
BOXERS/PAGE 30
H I G H S C H O O L F O O T B A L L
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS� Patriots quarterback TomBrady didn’t have muchreason to smile Friday night.
PAT S / PAGE 30
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
� Red Soxgeneralmanager BenCheringtonponders are p o r t e r ’squestion atS a t u rd a y ’sFenway Parknewsconference toannounce theteam’sblockbusterdeal with theLos AngelesDodgers.
GONE-ZO/PAGE 31