Sports, especially baseball, is about stories.  Everything has a story: the season, the team, each player, each game.  A good season has lots of good stories; a great season has stories you wish your parents were alive to experience. Like this one:

So where we are with the Red Sox at midseason?

The Good Stories

David Ortiz is having an all-star year, when we were afraid he was on the downhill side.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia has turned into a pretty good player.

Daniel Nava has come back from the bottom of the depth chart to become a pretty good player.  (He was a one-play good story in 2010, when he hit the first pitch he saw in the big leagues for a grand slam.)

Will Middlebrooks and Felix Doubront look like pretty good young players.

And, um, that’s about it.

The Bad Stories

In no particular order:

The team with the third-highest payroll in the majors has a 43-43 record.

The Yankees came back from a nine-run deficit and beat the Red Sox by six.

Josh Beckett sucks for a front-line pitcher.

John Lester sucks for a front-line pitcher.

Clay Buchholz sucks for a front-line pitcher.

Daniel Bard sucked so bad they had to send him to the minors, where he continues to suck.

Dice-K finally came back from his injury, turned out to be the same old Dice-K, then got injured again.

Adrian Gonzalez sucks for a guy getting paid $20 million a year.

Kevin Youkilis sucked, got hurt, came back and sucked some more, then got traded.

Jacoby Ellsbury has missed half the season with an injury.

Carl Crawford has missed half the season with an injury.

I don’t like the way Bobby Valentine chews gum.

I may have missed a few, but I’m thinking the ratio of bad stories to good is about three to one. Things could turn around starting tomorrow, but this doesn’t bode well for my summer.

So, in case things don’t get any better, here’s another memory: