Dan Duquette

Being a fan of the Boston Red Sox is never easy. After spending decades of relishing in the role as the lovable losers, the Red Sox finally won a World Series ring. In fact they went on to win more than one championship and people began to expect them to win. As a fan, I also began to believe that every year the Red Sox, my team, could win it all.

The Boston Red Sox All-Time Starting Rotation

Imagine you are responsible for selecting a fantasy starting rotation and pitching staff to represent the Boston Red Sox. Your staff would have to face the fantasy staffs of all the other major league teams. Who would make your rotation? Who would you select for back up and relief roles?

In a list of greatest players in the history of one of baseball’s most storied franchise, the names at the top of Boston’s list are Hall of Famers.

Williams. Yastrzemski. Rice. Doerr. Young.

So it is not every day that a player comes along with enough caliber to crack the top part of such a list.

One such player did emerge in the summer of 1997.

Although many refer to baseball's current generation as the "steroid era," far from the only changes in the game can be traced to medically enhanced physiques. Pitcher wins, losses, and saves, batting average, RBI, errors and bunting all seem to be on the way out in favor of adjusted ERA, BABIP, VORP, range factors, and pitch counts, all leading to a newer era in baseball influenced by the work of sabermetrics—trying to measure objectively what leads to wins and losses, challenging the conventional wisdom, and often upending it.

"More Days in First Place. More Days in First Place. More Days in First Place."

That’s Boston’s sports radio WEEI mocking a robotic Dan Duquette after the 2001 season, when the ‘Duke’ proclaimed that the Red Sox spent ‘more days in first place’ than that the New York Yankees.

Roger Clemens was, for many years, my favorite baseball player. I wore No. 21 for one year in Little League. I had his posters littering my bedroom walls and still have one in my office. I saved every article I could find about him so that I could read them later.

Clemens, as far as I could tell, was not only the best righthander in the game, but he was also the hardest worker. I enjoyed watching Roger Clemens compete, even when he was with the Yankees.