Red Sox red hot in the offseason

IT'S ABOUT TIME!

Finally, Jim Rice gets his due from the petty baseball writers. After 15 years of waiting for the call, Rice - who spent his entire 16-year career with the Red Sox - was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and will get his much-deserved bust in Cooperstown, as I've detailed the past few years.

Meanwhile, for those still playing at Fenway, please welcome a few veterans and a young buck full of promise currently hopping planes to Beantown to join the 2004 and 2007 World Series champions.

The Dang Yanks added Mark Teixeira, C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett in the offseason, so the Red Sox responded with John Smoltz and Brad Penny on the mound and Rocco Baldelli off the bench, along with a 38-year-old in the bullpen (filling the geriatric gap with the departure of Mike Timlin?). And yet I feel okay with this.

In his blog at the Boston Globe site, Tony Massarotti isn't exactly jumping up and down with joy at this week's signings, but like me knows it doesn't matter much what chess pieces GM Theo Epstein starts out with, it's what he does with him once the game starts:

Is it a championship roster? For now, that is impossible to say -- but then, at the moment, it doesn't need to be. Epstein has between now and July 31 to further address whatever deficiencies the club may develop between before then, and we know the Red Sox have the wherewithal and resources to plug those holes.

The Sox are spending less than $15 million (before potential bonuses) on four players who could play a major impact on how the Sox win back the AL East. If I have any doubts about any of them, just having lived in Atlanta for nine years, I can vouch for future Hall of Famer Smoltz as a class act, a veteran leader and a hoss when he's in the game.

And as for why Teixeira didn't pick the Sox, Boston fans should have fun with this tidbit of info via Peter Gammons:

He wanted to go to the Yankees, his wife doesn't like Boston -- apparently she doesn't like the stores on Newbury Street or something -- and in the end that's the way it goes.