Dear Larry,

As you near the end of your first season as president and chief executive officer of the Boston Red Sox baseball club, I wanted to thank you for some of the major changes that you and your staff have implemented at Fenway Park this season. So many of the improvements seem so practical and obvious that it is amazing that previous owner John Harrington and general manager Dan Duquette didn’t come up with them during their lengthy stays with the club. Overall, the current Red Sox hierarchy has done a splendid job of making Fenway a more fan-friendly place to visit, and the organization can take great pride in that.

Looking all the way back to Opening Day 2002, that spectacular April Fools’ Day that gave fans their first look at the upgraded park and also a terrific pre-game tribute, one almost forgets about how much hope and optimism fans brought to the ball yard that day. It was almost as if the Munchkins had been freed from the overbearing watch of the Wicked Witch and her minions, and all of a sudden, liberty and freedom rang. The gate separating the bleacher area from the grandstand was taken down, the concourse under the stands was wider than ever, the varieties of food and drink were vastly increased and improved, and the concept of infinitely "standing pat" in terms of improving the overall fan experience seemed forever banished. Then, prior to the game itself, the assembled masses were treated to René Rancourt and Steven Tyler respectively singing the Canadian and American national anthems, the Green Monster–size American flag draping the left-field wall, the F-15s flying overhead, and best of all, the world champion Patriots, Lombardi trophy in hand, emerging from behind the flag to throw out the ceremonial first ball en masse. God, it was wonderful.

The first few months of hardball were better than anyone expected, as your team streaked to the best record in baseball, including a stupendous 25-6 road record through early June. The squad was the toast of the majors; all the injuries and clubhouse dissension that had hurt the 2001 edition were distant memories; and talk of finally breaking the curse was rampant. Derek Lowe threw the first Fenway no-hitter in 37 years, Pedro seemed back to his old self after a slow start, and free-agent pick-up Johnny Damon was smackin’ the rawhide at a .350 clip and stealing bases like no Sox player in recent memory. Nothing could derail the 2002 Sox from their appointment with the playoffs and possibly destiny come October, and Fenway sellouts were commonplace.

Then Manny Ramirez broke his finger, and the team returned to earth a little bit, but Lowe, Martinez, and even off-season signee John Burkett made up an imposing rotation, and the team remained atop both offensive and pitching statistical categories for weeks on end.

I’m not exactly sure when it all began to unravel, but I’d have to point to the weekend series just prior to the All-Star break, when the Sox dropped two of three at home to woeful Detroit. After the mid-season classic, which featured seven Red Sox players including the starting pitcher (Lowe) on the AL squad, the team went to Toronto and dropped three straight after winning the opener of the four-game series, 10-3. The following weekend in New York saw back-to-back 9-8 heartbreaking losses in the Bronx, and the Sox — a team that had taken two of three at nearly every prior stop along the way — began a tailspin in which they struggled to win even one game of every series they played, even as the hated Yankees began to extend their lead in the AL East.

Probably the nadir was two days after that second one-run debacle in New York, when the Sox returned to Fenway for a day-night doubleheader against the minor-league-caliber Tampa Bay Devil Rays. After a 22-4 thrashing by Boston in the opener, Derek Lowe shut down the Rays through seven innings in the nightcap before Chris Haney and Ugueth Urbina managed to "close out" the Rays in the ninth by giving up five runs with no outs, leading to a disheartening 5-4 loss. Not only did that confounding setback deprive Lowe of a valuable victory that may ultimately cost him the Cy Young Trophy, but it led to another dismal effort the following night, as the D-Rays pounded starter Frank Castillo for six runs in just under two innings to pin a 9-5 loss on the hometown lads.

It has never been the same since, with no efforts more embarrassing than the back-to-back shutout losses to the Yanks at home late last month that sealed the Sox’ divisional fate. And with Oakland and Anaheim both putting together significant winning streaks before and after the threatened player walkout, even the opportunity to clinch a wild-card spot has been summarily lost.

Is the Sox’ fall from grace your fault, Larry? Not entirely, though you have to take some of the flak. The fact that interim GM Mike Port and his staff completed transactions that allowed the team to acquire pitchers Alan Embree, Bob Howry, and outfielder Cliff Floyd showed that the team was committed to improving, even with a bulging payroll that is probably testing owner John Henry’s wallet. Nonetheless, you have been very quiet regarding a lot of the controversies that have popped up in recent weeks, and the fact that you haven’t endorsed Port or removed his "interim" tag shows that his days are probably numbered here. If that means that you can snag New England products Billy Beane (who as the A’s GM has done such a remarkable job putting together a contending team on a shoestring budget) or J.P. Ricciardi (who has quietly made the Blue Jays a force to be reckoned with in future years), then fine. Maybe you know something about their future availability that I don’t, and either one could conceivably be a great GM here, even though Port in my opinion has done nothing to warrant losing his job. Yet that’s business, isn’t it?

But without the confidence that you can sign either of those guys away from his current club, then Port has shown that he deserves the chance to finish the job he started, even if he was originally recruited by Duquette and isn’t technically one of "your guys." Fact is, the team that Port has put together on the field is a pretty good one, if only they could play with a little desire and heart. Since they don’t, that falls on the shoulders of the manager.

Speaking of which, your choice of Grady Little to manage this squad last spring seemed to be the right one, especially considering the 40-17 start that the club got off to. I remember hearing how the players stood up and cheered when Little was introduced as the new skipper, and that his folksy manner and past relationships with many of the players, particularly Manny Ramirez in Cleveland, would spark the team consistently to play hard for him.

But things haven’t worked out so well, as we’ve noted above, and again your silence is deafening regarding his status. That’s your right, I guess. I know that Little is signed for another year, but you’ve shown in the past that the organization will eat contracts (bravo, in the cases of Jose Offerman and Darren Oliver) if the players are not improving the team. But if you really did, and do, believe that Little is the man to run this ship, and want to see if the players feel as strongly about him now as they did in his spring-training introduction, why didn’t you stop by the Sox clubhouse in early September and make a statement? Why not get in front of the players and say, "I know that it is remote that you guys will contend for the AL East crown, or even the wild-card spot, but if you want to show me that you believe Grady Little should be the manager of this nine, and that you want him to continue, then I will give you the remainder of the schedule to demonstrate to me that he can lead you to success. If you play hard and show the spirit that has certainly been lacking in recent months, and that can translate to victories on the field, then Grady will be back. Otherwise, you will have shown through your actions — obviously, a season-long display — that a change needs to be made. And I will make it, most likely bringing on a hard-nosed disciplinarian who will not accept losing, insubordination, and underachieving." That’s what I believe you, Larry Lucchino, at some point should have done.

As I’ve mentioned, you and the organization have done a lot of good things this season: the Ted Williams ceremony that I attended was first-rate, as was the idea of opening the park that day for ordinary folks to come and pay tribute and walk the Fenway Park perimeter. The closing of Yawkey Way on game days that allows for early entry into the park and the enjoyment of concessions out on the street is also not a bad idea. (Although the prices are somewhat outrageous, particularly $5.75 for the 12-ounce cans of "Beers of the World" — which include Sam Adams, Heineken, and Bass. Fans will continue to make their pre-game pilgrimage to the Cask or Beer Works if those prices remain in place.) Yet despite those nice touches and the additional food and drink stands inside, those dastardly Aramark concessionaires continue to fleece the Fenway faithful for $3.50 hot dogs, $4 sodas, $4.75 beers, and $5.75 bags of peanuts, and that’s wholly unacceptable, especially since prices will undoubtedly skyrocket even more next year.

Worse, on my most recent visit to the park on Monday night, I was treated to a filthy stadium (granted, the early game of the day-night doubleheader didn’t end until nearly 5:15, but since they paid separate admission, the visitors to the nightcap deserved some kind of consideration instead of garbage on or under their seats) and a second-rate line-up.

Funny how that worked: for Pedro’s outing earlier — with the ace going for his 19th victory — the team trotted out its regulars: Damon, Shea Hillenbrand, Nomar, Manny, Floyd, Brian Daubach, Jason Varitek, and Trot Nixon. For the night game, however, the team backing starter Castillo (a miserable 5-14 record heading in) included only one of the aforementioned players (Damon), and instead saw Rickey Henderson, Benny Agbayani, Carlos Baerga, Shane Andrews, Doug Mirabelli, Tony Clark, and Freddy Sanchez. Excuse me, but shouldn’t folks get a reduced ticket price if they come to the park to see stars and instead see scrubs? (No offense, guys.) That, sir, was a flat-out outrage, and anyone paying $60 or $39 for boxes, $24 for the grandstand, or $20 for the bleachers should feel cheated. Yeah, they’re major-leaguers, too, but the disparity between the day-game and night-game rosters was abominable. In addition, it said to everyone in the stadium: we have run up the white flag, and we know now we can’t win anything, so we’ll just throw out whomever we feel like — fans be damned. And they were, as the team flopped in its efforts against a rookie making his first major-league start, losing tepidly, 7-1. Just a grand night at the ol’ ball yard, that was. This on the heels of a weekend series where the Sox hosted the Orioles (a team that had won just one of 19 games coming in) and dropped two of three to the Birds, including bookend 8-3 losses.

I know you’ll have lots of decisions to make in the off-season, and I don’t envy some of them. Cost-cutting measures will probably need to be implemented, and that means some will stay and some will go. We’ll address those issues at a separate time, but for now I want to congratulate you and the rest of the organization for the myriad pluses you have injected into the park, the team, and its components, but obviously there is still a lot of work to do. I wish you well as you undertake these endeavors, but for this team ever to have any kind of enduring success, it needs to — as Peter Gammons has said, and I have often repeated — care as much as its fans do. The Patriots certainly do, and have shown it. Why the Sox can’t, or don’t, I don’t know, but that’s not my problem, nor Red Sox Nation’s problem. It’s yours.

See what you can do. And best of luck.

Sincerely,

Christopher Young

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com.