After Announcing Two Docuseries On Netflix, One Showcasing The 2004 Season That Broke "The Curse", The Red Sox Apparently Pulled The Plug On Filmmakers For This Season's Behind The Scenes Series For Undisclosed Reasons After The Red Sox Struggled At The End Of August

(Preface - This is a LONG blog about Sports. If neither of those are you thing, turn back now.)

So back in February Netflix and the Boston Red Sox jointly announced they were teaming up for not one, but TWO documentary series revolving around the Boston Red Sox. 

The first would be an introspective, behind the scenes look at the 2004 team that broke the Curse of The Bambino. 

The other would be a Hard-Knocks style series following around the 2024 campaign from start to finish, from upper levels of the front office, down to the daily goings on in the clubhouse. 

Klemmer obviously wasn't excited. 

But Red Sox nation was thrilled by this news. And for good reason. 

Here's part of the official press release from Netflix-

Netflix today announced two new projects with Major League Baseball featuring one of the league’s most storied franchises, the Boston Red Sox. 

For the first time, Netflix will follow an MLB team over the course of a full season. This docuseries will feature one of sports’ most historic teams, the Boston Red Sox, and provide viewers a window into what it takes to compete across a season’s ups and downs in one of the most rabid sports environments. Netflix will have unprecedented access to players, coaches and executives throughout the 2024 season and the docuseries will debut in 2025. 

Executive Produced and Directed by Greg Whiteley of One Potato Productions (Cheer, Last Chance U, Wrestlers). Also serving as Executive Producers are Andrew Fried and Dane Lillegard of Boardwalk Pictures (Cheer, Chef’s Table, Race: Bubba Wallace).

The second project– coming to Netflix later this year– is an untitled documentary looking back at the extraordinary and historic 2004 Red Sox season, which culminated with one of the greatest comebacks in sports history and the franchise’s first World Series title in 86 years. It will feature new, exclusive interviews with key players and figures from the team that broke one of baseball’s longest curses where the franchise has now won more World Series (four) in the last 20 years than any club in MLB.

Here was the trailer for the '04 series.

Boston Globe - The upcoming docuseries “The Comeback: 2004 Boston Red Sox,” which chronicles the team’s journey to the 2004 World Series, is set to premiere on Oct. 23, Netflix announced Monday.

Now, twenty years later, the three-episode series will include interviews with players like Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz, and Kevin Millar, telling the story of how the Red Sox broke their 86-year championship drought.

The documentary series looks back at one of the greatest comebacks in sports history — when the Boston Red Sox broke the infamous "Curse of the Bambino" and defeated their archrivals, the New York Yankees — going on to win

Directed by Colin Barnicle, the docuseries will also take a look into the Red Sox’ feud with archrivals the Yankees.

Viewers will be able to hear from those that helped make the historic victory possible, including former manager Terry Francona, former general manager and vice president Theo Epstein, and more.

Another series about the Red Sox is coming next year, documenting their 2024 season with exclusive interviews from players, coaches, and executives.

First off, how the hell has it been 20 years since this happened? 

Secondly, if this 2004 doc is anything close to "Four Days in October" than sign me the fuck up because this has all the makings to be another incredible trip down memory lane.

Third, this has Dr. Creepy's wife Linda's fingerprints all over it because there's nothing she loves doing more than whoring this franchise out every which way possible (i.e. Boston Red Sox brand tampons) but I don't care in this case. 

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And as for the Hard-Knocks, Drive To Survive type behind the scenes series, how fucking cool did that sound? 

Like many others, I got hooked on Drive To Survive over the pandemic lockdown (wasn't that awesome?). It was so well done that I came down with F! fever there for a minute. If the producers and showrunners could make an elitist european sport where they go around in circles 100 times fascinating to the point you get sucked in, just imagine what they can do with America's past time and most historic franchise. 

This was a big deal because it's the first time Netflix has ever done this with an MLB team. It's not just about the games, it's about the players, the coaches, the whole organization. They want to show the world what it's really like to be a part of a Major League Baseball team.

And get this, it wasn't even supposed to be about the Red Sox at first. Netflix and MLB were talking about doing something with baseball in general. But after a while, they decided it would be better to focus on one team for the whole season. And the Red Sox were the ones who stepped up and said, "We're in!" because, again, Linda Pizzuti runs the show and loves eyeballs. So expect her to be front and center a lot in this thing. (Not necessarily a bad thing)

Peter Byrne - PA Images. Getty Images.

What a great double-dose this is/was going to be. We're going to get a behind the scenes look at the day-to-day life of the various departments that make up a Major League Baseball organization, as well as unheard of access to the players and coaching staff. Even though this team overachieved for a while this season before crumbling down the end, it should make for an interesting watch from a pure baseball standpoint. 

But wait… not so fast my friends.

It appears the organization pulled the plug on things as the team crashed back down to Earth these past 4 weeks. 

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I was talking with Hubbs this morning about this and it is a real head scratcher. 

What the fuck did the Red Sox expect? 

This team is a disaster, has been for a while now, and rather than addressing its personnel needs in the offseason, ownership took two steps back by making a series of terrible moves. 

As Klemmer wrote in his blog - 

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They should boo them. As bad as the team has been, they've somehow gotten worse in this off-season. They've lost Justin Turner, Alex Verdugo, Chris Sale and James Paxton and replaced them with Tyler O'Neill, Vaughn Grissom and Lucas Giolito. I do like the Sale/Grissom trade for the Red Sox because they should be in a rebuilding mode. But ownership doesn't have the courage to commit to a true teardown so they remain in sports purgatory while the fans reach for fire and brimstones.

And he's right. 

Ever since the Chaim Bloom era began, it's been more than apparent that this ownership group cares zilch about the product on the field, and only about growing the bank account. It's sad because much like Cubs fans and Wrigley Field, Fenway stays packed no matter what the product on the field looks or performs like. 

And as much as you want to dog the team, Alex Cora had this year's squad playing far above their means, somehow not only staying relevent, but staying in a wildcard race for 3/4 of the year. But the wheels fell off down the stretch.

My question is who told the production team to take a hike? 

Was it the front office? It couldn't be could it? They don't give a shit about looking bad. All they care about is lining their pockets and being on Chronicle and whoever else sucks them off as much as they can. 

Was it the players? 

Had to be right? 

Were Cora and the team finally like "enough is enough. Get these goddamn cameras the hell out of here"? 

Either way it sucks but I hope we still get to see what was captured from this year. 

As shitty as this news might be, AT LEAST we know we are getting a blast from the past and get to relive one of the most surreal weeks in sports ever. The 2024 ALCS.

(Fun fact - one thing a lot of people forget about that whole entire run, because of how insane that series was, was that the 2004 Red Sox caught fire, winning 25 out of 30 games to finish the regular season. They had been trailing the Yankees by a seemingly insurmountable 10.5 games in the division on August 15th, but by September 17th, they had closed the gap to a mere 2.5 games. The Sox peaked at just the right time, setting the stage for a dramatic showdown with their archrivals in the Bronx in that ALCS. Hollywood truly couldn't have scripted it any better.)

Of course, according to all reports they had to make sure the players were on board for this.  They didn't want to force anyone into doing it. But it sounds like everyone's excited about the opportunity. Which is awesome to hear.

All I ask is that Netflix not hold back or skimp on how big a dose of Pedro we get. Honestly, if they let him just narrate the entire thing there is zero chance this thing can miss. 

p.s. - one thing I never understood and that didn't sit well with me was the whole "Yankees are Pedro's daddy" thing that happened in that series. I know Pedro said it himself, out of frustration because they beat him 3 times in a row to finish the season. (Including twice in 5 days). But the man fucking owned them up until that point—he had an ERA of 2.69 and 183 strikeouts in 20 appearances against the Yankees between the 1999 and 2003 seasons. 

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Highlighted by his masterpiece of an outing in 1999 at Yankee Stadium.

To this day the filthiest pitcher I've ever seen in my lifetime.