Keith Foulke decides... he's out

Keith Foulke has decided not to return to Boston... he's not coming back to the land of Johnny from Burger King because he wants to be closer to his family.

I find this decision rather surprising, from a monetary standpoint at least. Foulke always said that if he left baseball "today" that he wouldn't miss it and would move on with his life. He's a hockey fan and baseball to him is not a passion - it's a job.

The money is/was nice, but there are more important things in life to him. Cheers, Keith, on that one.

Now, he's not retiring, we assume, but he definitely is taking a pay cut this year. He just left a guaranteed $3.75 million on the table. Maybe the money isn't that important.

We can also assume that emotions (besides those re: family) played into this a bit too, like pride. Foulke was relegated to setup roles and has been the subject of many rants from the Boston media and citizenry over the past two years whilst dealing with injuries and an overall loss of ability and/or under-performance issues.

After performing superb his 1st year on the team and like an MVP in the World Series, he clearly had issues upon following the short off-season into 2005. In 2006, he lost his closer role just days in to the season only to continue to struggle and eventually leave for more surgeries.

Foulke was never going to be comfortable again here. While the team was probably willing to give him yet another chance to redeem himself, and would have been contractually obligated to let him try, he knew that many team officials wanted to move in different directions and certainly the media and fans would so far gone that it'd be near impossible to regain their respect. (Ed note: Is that ever possible in a market such as Boston? And Foulke isn't the kind of guy to try, at least off the field PR-wise.)

Put that all aside: Let's ignore his poor choice of words, bad quotes, lack of honesty or lack of being forthcoming to the media, and we'll definitly skip the topic of who should "own" the famous World Series last out ball, for now - Let's give credit to Keith for putting his money, and in fact himself, where his mouth was and taking his game out of town - And thank him for his service.

Keith: we thank you and wish you well!