'Truck Day' starts clock ticking on Red Sox predictions

The Red Sox equipment truck waits outside
Fenway Park several years ago.

Illness, snow, illness, snow … it’s been a long, hard winter for many of us in Red Sox Nation. But the team’s equipment truck leaves for spring training in just two days, and with it rides our hopes and expectations for a successful season, for ourselves and for our ballclub.

At this moment, absolutely anything is possible: we could win the lottery, and the Sox could win the World Series. Or we could lose our jobs, and the Sox could be swept by the Yankees. Anything could happen:

• The Red Sox win total could be 101 or 82.
• Daisuke Matsuzaka could win the Cy Young Award or be disabled by May 1.
• David Ortiz could hit three homers per week or none until July 4.
• Marco Scutaro could go all season without making an error or boot so many balls he’ll be sold to the Revolution.
• Adrian Gonzalez could be traded here by Opening Day or not until the Pirates win their next World Series.
   

It’s the sports fan’s prerogative to stake out whatever extreme ground he or she wants, with or without having been inconvenienced by facts. And sometimes, after all, seasons play out in ways that the facts simply never would have predicted (see Red Sox, 1967 and Patriots, 2001).

So until the truck leaves, the players report, and the season begins, we’ll continue to take our medicine, shovel our driveways, and opine away, secure in the knowledge that it’ll be months until we can be proven wrong.

Can’t wait to see what happens.