Rafael Devers Didn’t Speak, But He Said Everything

Quotes don’t matter. Good stories do.

Does baseball matter? Like, at all?

As someone who edits a website that documents every Red Sox game (along with nearly every game played by the Red Sox’s minor league affiliates) I probably shouldn’t say this, but the actual things that happen on a baseball field don’t matter. Not one bit. There is absolutely no societal value in determining which of two teams composed of 26 arbitrarily grouped men is better at hitting, throwing, and catching a baseball than the other. Crowning a World Series champion does absolutely nothing to advance humanity in any way, either socially, scientifically, or artistically.

And yet, society clearly has determined that baseball — and sports in general — does matter. The massive amounts of dollars and hours we collectively spend on sports tell us this.

So how do we reconcile this paradox? We do so by recognizing that sports are important not necessarily because of the things that happen on the field, but because of the various ways that the people watching sports process the things that happen on the field. The importance of Major League Baseball is found in the ways that it enriches the lives of the rest of us who aren’t playing the game. It gives us entertainment, community, and an intellectual pursuit. Ultimately, at its most important, baseball gives us human stories, just like literature and film. And when it comes down to it, there really aren’t many things in the world that are more important than the stories we tell about ourselves. (Humanities majors, rise up!)

Ted Williams refusing to eject from a burning F9F Panther because he feared the the subsequent leg injuries would end his baseball career – and then going 4-4 with a homer against the Washington Senators just six months later – is a story that matters. Dwight Gooden emerging as the most successful young pitcher in the history of the game – only to crumble under the weight of that success, both professionally and personally – is a story that matters. Barry Bonds turning to PEDs because of his intensely human desperation to be respected and adored at a level commensurate with his skills — only to end up as one of game’s greatest villains — is a story that matters.

These stories matter because they help us think about what it means to be alive in the world. Without them, the entire concept of sports as a spectator pastime is empty and meaningless. Without them, we would have no real reason to care.

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On Tuesday night, the Boston Red Sox lost a baseball game against the New York Mets. Some baseball things happened on the baseball field during that baseball game: Kutter Crawford tweaked his pitch mix and generated more swings and misses; Fransisco Lindor demolished a ball to tie Ernie Banks with his fifth 30-homer season as a shortstop; the Red Sox lineup once again made a lefty I’ve never heard of look like a cross between Walter Johnson and Mo’ne Davis.

But the most meaningful thing that happened in Queens that night didn’t happen on the field. It happened in the clubhouse after the game, when Rafael Devers reportedly sat silently at his locker, bat in hand, staring straight ahead and saying nothing for 40 minutes.

This was a dramatic and intensely human moment. This was a man confronting failure. This was a man who came to Boston when he was practically still a boy. This was a man who, years later, after seeing his friends and mentors depart the team, had been left to assume a position of leadership he may not even want or be equipped to handle.

This was the type of small human moment that makes baseball matter. This was a story. And if you’re a writer, you should’ve been itching to pull out your notebook and tell that story.

Julian McWilliams of the Boston Globe did just that:

His gaze never left his locker until it did. But only to pick up his bat, mimicking his hand placement. The same hand placement he adjusted from high above his head to near his chest during the offseason that has helped him put together arguably his best year — but, unquestionably, his most consistent season — of his career.

…

Devers, who has created a habit of not talking after losses this year or, even sometimes, wins, is typically the first player dressed and out the door. The first bus back to the players’ hotel was at 10:30 p.m. The second bus was set to leave at 11:00 p.m. Devers was still seated at his locker with his hands now wrapped around the back of his head at 10:30 p.m.

Presumably, there was a lot on his mind. For instance, how are the Sox still 4½ games behind the Royals for the final wild-card spot despite Kansas City’s seven-game losing streak? How has an offense which carried the team for a huge chunk of the year, suddenly become non-existent? How could Devers himself, a player who has a history of finding success at the plate despite injuries, look so defeated in the batter’s box?

…

The struggles that boiled over into the clubhouse afterward forced Devers to sit at his locker until 10:30. The first bus left. He then got up and went to the trainer’s room before re-emerging and showering. He appeared again, roughly at 10:54 p.m., seemingly, rushing as he tried to make it to the 11:00 p.m. bus. Cora peeked in the clubhouse almost at the same time that Devers peeked behind him, only to see the media still wanting to hear from the team’s best player.

The Sox spokesperson walked over to Devers again, alerting him of the request, “Mhhm” Devers said.

After an hour and five minutes of waiting, the answer was no.

McWilliams took in the extraordinary scene before him and wove it into the greater story of that night’s game and the entire Red Sox season. He put us in the clubhouse and made us think about what it means to not only fail, but to fail publicly. This is what good sportswriting can and should do.

Unfortunately, the Chrises Smith and Cotillo of MassLive.com, decided to take a different tack. They decided to whine. Here’s Christopher Smith’s take on the same scene:

The Red Sox’ 7-2 loss to the Mets ended at approximately 9:45 p.m. Tuesday.

A frustrated Rafael Devers sat with a bat for about 40 minutes after staring into his locker. The media relations staff told him that reporters wanted to talk with him. He had everyone wait around for more than an hour, then left without speaking at 10:55 p.m. after he showered and dressed.

. . .

Devers is grinding through it with his team in the race. He’s clearly not 100%. What he’s doing on the field is admirable.

But he also has shown a lack of leadership and accountability at times off the field this season. He has chosen not to speak with the media multiple times after losses this season, leaving other teammates with less service time to do it.

He’s not required to speak to the media. He doesn’t have to do it. Being Boston’s highest-paid player also doesn’t require him to be a vocal leader. That’s OK. But why not tell reporters at 10 p.m. instead of 11 p.m. so they don’t have to wait around? What he did lacks basic common courtesy.

Not content with missing the point of what was happening right in front of him, Smith then took to Twitter, which is when Cotillo got involved:

Yes, what Rafael Devers did was rude and inconsiderate. If he wasn’t going to talk to the press, he should have made that clear so they could do their jobs and then go home and melt on the couch in front of Netflix like the rest of us. Life is hard and we all deserve that much.

Moreover, I’m extremely sympathetic to beat reporters with respect to the abuse they take from fans for merely doing their jobs. Many fans — the terminally online ones in particular — have reached near political levels when it when it comes to devotion to their teams. Like other political devotees, they often view the media as the enemy and greet negative press about their teams in the same way the political partisans do: with derision, ire, name-calling, and assertions that the reporters are agenda-driven liars. Cotillo, in particular, faced this throughout this past offseason, as he doggedly reported on the Red Sox’s obvious unwillingness to spend in free agency. This behavior is weird, unstable, and embarassing. And that’s before we even get into the sad ways it reflects on contemporary America, where too many people eagerly side with the man making $30 million a year (or even worse, the billionaire owner of a multinational sports conglomerate) over the reporter who, just like them, grew up a fan, peaked in little league, and now stresses about mortgage payments, camp tuition, and the next round of layoffs.

But what Devers did wasn’t only rude, it was also extremely human. And if your’e a writer who is at all interested in documenting how we all live, then you should recognize that and use it. Devers’ $30 million paycheck doesn’t shield him from the same anxieties the rest of us have, nor does it force him into a role he hasn’t asked for. Devers is paid $30 million because that’s what he’s earned through his play of the field, nothing else. And in the face of a third consecutive late-season collapse, Devers’ inability to provide the press with a useless cliche about grinding, taking it one day at a time, or going out and getting ‘em tomorrow shouldn’t have made it harder for Smith to write his story — it should have been Smith’s story.

But, more often than not, digital media outlets like MassLive don’t care about taking the time to tell these stories. MassLive probably produces more pieces of Red Sox-related content every day than any other outlet. Some of it is quite good — they’ve carved a nice little niche for themselves diving beyond the slash lines of prospects, in particular. But all too often, MassLive’s business model appears to prioritize short, shallow pieces of content designed to appeal more to SEO than to actual readers. They transcribe one quote, surround it by a couple hundred words of obvious, surface-level context, and hit post. See, e.g. this piece, a variation of which you can find on MassLive just about every day. It contains a grand total of 237 words (a number they goosed up by copying and pasting the standings), and it’s not worth reading. But it does get sucked into the algorithm.

Again, I’m sympathetic here — I’ve done my time down in the content mines. Once you see a piece like that, you understand Smith’s complaint a bit more: he needed a quote from Devers to plug into his template. Frankly, if Smith and Cotillo are going to complain about anything, they should complain about a business model that incentivizes them to waste their time producing plug-and-play drivel that’s designed to attract bots instead of readers.

This type of content doesn’t matter. Worse yet, it minimizes the meaning of baseball and writing itself in a way that’s not going to end well for either industry. The bots are coming for us all eventually, but they’re going to start on easy mode and pick off the targets that look like NPCs first.

For forty minutes on Tuesday night, Rafael Devers sat at his locker and didn’t say a single word. In so doing, he told us more about the 2024 Red Sox than anyone else has. It’s wasn’t Ted Williams returning from war or Doc Gooden succumbing to his demons; it was much smaller than those stories. But in that smallness it was arguably more profound and relatable: it was a man having a bad day at work in the midst a bad year at work. It was one of those tiny, trying moments that we all have to fight through every day just to keep going, whether we’re ballplayers or bus drivers. It was the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If that’s not good enough for you, what is?