The Natives Are Restless.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Richard the Third, Act 1, scene 1, 1-4

So said Richard the Third meaning the "winter of our discontent" is now over thanks to his brother Edward being made king and the result of which is that all their troubles have gone away. Theo fits nicely into the role of Edward. He wrests control and makes all our lives better. But he is not above reproach as Richard promptly starts complaining about the way his brother rules the kingdom. Mike Lowell (and possibly others, if this report of clubhouse grousing is to be believed) might be cast as our Richard.

The complaint is against the treatment of Mike Lowell and Jason Bay. I adore Mike Lowell and I'm ready to bust out the black crepe for him. I am. And I'd absolutely agree that he has a reason to be annoyed or disappointed or even angry over the way Theo's treated him. And it may be hard for him to accept but the stark reality is that he is not nearly the defender that he once was and that he can barely move. If he can't play the position and he can't DH (because we've already got one of those with similar issues), then what does he expect them to do? Especially if he's going to complain about sitting on the bench.

I don't know that you can make a case for Jason Bay, though. Maybe I'm just blindly toeing the party line but my understanding of the July breakdown in talks was that it was mutual. (Or maybe it was just Theo saying they were going to table it and to stop bugging Bay about it.) I don't seem him being mistreated by the front office.

But if Bronson Arroyo is right when he says:

"As players we don't care if (owner) John Henry loses money on the year. Players care about winning the World Series. Dollars and cents don't mean (anything) except for your own individual contract. So, you never want to see a good teammate, a player who you think can help the club, leave. But that's the way it is."

it seems like a little bit of a double standard, no? He seems to be saying: I don't care about management's end of it. As long as you can pay me my $12 million, I just want to win. But when management says: I just want to win. And if I have to pay $9 million for you to go away so that I can win, I'm willing to do that. It becomes a problem.

And lastly the quote by the anonymous player upbraiding the front office:

"I was almost taken aback by some of the stuff that has gone on here. They'll play the card to get the player here, but as soon as they get here, they'll cast him away."

My inner Harriot the Spy is abuzz with trying to figure out who might have said it. "...stuff that has gone on here." seems to indicate to me that it's from someone who is currently on the team but who has played somewhere else. So, Youkilis, Pedroia, Ellsbury, Lester, Buchholz, Papelbon, and Delcarmen are out. I would disqualify Okajima and Matsuzaka simply because it's unlikely that Joe McDonald speaks Japanese well enough to bother with either of them. As a mercenary himself, JD Drew wouldn't have anything to say about loyalty. Jason Bay and Mike Lowell can be scratched as the source of the quote. Victor Martinez wasn't around long enough to be aware of the Jason Bay situation. So that leaves Varitek, David Ortiz, Josh Beckett and Tim Wakefield. Varitek can't string three words together into a coherent sentence, so he's out. In English David Ortiz tends to introduce each sentence (e.g. I'm telling you man). It might have been Beckett as he seems fiercely loyal but I don't know if he'd insist on anonymity. It might have been Wakefield because he does have something to complain about and he may be out of a job. But if I was going to venture a guess (and he probably doesn't qualify because he's not on the roster anymore) I would go with Rocco Baldelli; fairly intelligent, played somewhere else fairly recently. Or it might just be because I've decided that Rocco is a very Shakespearean character.