**OnlineHost** Welcome to Red Sox Chat!

tekWar: Friends, it looks as though I will not serve again as your Red Sox captain.

tekWar: And as previously discussed, there is no way I can name any of you as my successor.

NotPedroiaLookingFor: I think that I could make a great captain!

tekWar: hahaha are you kidding me, you look like you're 12

tekWar: I could maybe see you as one of the minor hands who swabs the deck or something

or maybe the powder monkey who procures gunpowder from the ship's magazine and delivers it to the poop deck

tekWar: or the ensign who joins an away team and takes a Klingon battle trident to the chest, but not before picking up some strange readings first

EllsburyDoughboy: Well I think I would make an excellent captain!

tekWar: no need to repeat yourself

EllsburyDoughboy: I didn't. You're talking to two different people.

tekWar: oh

oh, right, yeah

LowrieSeasoningSalt: Can I be captain?

tekWar: GOD WHAT IS WITH THIS TEAM

GOD

tekWar: Do the Red Sox even have a farm system, or is it just a giant incubator that conceives an identical gaggle of hairless, pale, emaciated five-tool players who look like they just chose the red pill?

NotPedroiaLookingFor: the red pill?

tekWar: uh yeah, you know, from The Matrix

NotPedroiaLookingFor: ohhhh that explains it

yeah we were all born on April 17, 2006 at 4:13 PM, so the reference kind of went over my head, whooosh, heh

EllsburyDoughboy: yeah I was going to arch my eyebrows at you until I remembered that we don't have any

LowrieSeasoningSalt: So if we don't have a team captain, who's going to do captain stuff?

tekWar: Just split the duties between yourselves.

The rank of "captain" is mostly ceremonial, but there are a few contingent responsibilities.

EllsburyDoughboy: Like what?

tekWar: Well, in the event that the Red Sox give up baseball in favor of commandeering a sea vessel, the captain would be the de facto commander of the ship.

EllsburyDoughboy: but when would that ever happen

tekWar: Okay, well, let me first make it clear that this would almost certainly never happen, but is the only possible set of circumstances in which this would happen:

tekWar: An epidemic cripples the nation's infrastructure. Basic human needs are nowhere to be found on land. The government devolves into a "night watchman" state that grows less and less effective with each passing day.

tekWar: A massive dust cloud, brought about by a confluence of factors, leaves the world with no arable land. Crops can no longer be grown anywhere.

tekWar: The only remaining ecosystem left on Earth is that found in bodies of saltwater. Therefore, fish and saltwater plant growths are the only remaining sources of food.

EllsburyDoughboy: yeah, but under what circumstances would the Red Sox all take to the seas together, that would take this already improbable scenario to level I could not realistically believe!

tekWar: Fair point. I was just getting to that.

tekWar: Do you remember the time Manny Ramirez tried to bake us all cookies? When he came into the clubhouse one day wearing an apron and gingerly holding a baking tray with oven mitts?

NotPedroiaLookingFor: sigh

yeah

manny being granny, etc

LowrieSeasoningSalt: God those things were foul

EllsburyDoughboy: tasted like cockroach penis, if that's even a thing

tekWar: You know there was some strange s*** in those cookies. I don't know the recipe he used, but I know it involved wheat germ, lithium, and glue.

tekWar: Now, imagine that these ingredients served as a catalyst to facilitate a specific sort of agent that would fight the hypothetical virus that plagues the land. We would be the only people left alive on the entire Eastern seaboard, if not the world.

tekWar: So...there you have it. The only situation in which the team captain would hold any sort of real authority.

tekWar: But save for that, the only duty assigned to the team captain is to come up with scenarios like these. It's the only way to retain job security.

tekWar: And it's not easy. This scenario took me years to think up.

The toughest part about being team captain, gentleman, is to come up with a viable scenario that doesn't sound exactly like "Waterworld."

EllsburyDoughboy: /stares blankly

tekWar: oh my God are you serious

NotPedroiaLookingFor: we've seen "the pursuit of happyness," does that help