Monumental Red Sox collapse is my fault

Don’t blame Terry Francona for the Red Sox September swoon. As manager of a failed team, he didn’t under-manage.

And don’t blame Sox general manager Theo Epstein for putting together a baseball team that, in the end, didn’t have the cohesiveness to hold grip on a playoff spot, despite a nine-game lead at the beginning of September.

And don’t blame $142 million Carl Crawford or any of the other players for sub-par performances, especially in the clutch.

Blame me.

I’m the reason for the Red Sox monumentally, historically awful collapse.

I didn’t invest enough mojo, enough enthusiasm in the team this season.

I’m a Red Sox fan and a citizen of Red Sox Nation, but I failed in my duties as both a fan and a citizen.

My Red Sox cap should be confiscated. I should be stripped of my citizenship and deported.

As a true fan, you have to invest yourself into a team’s season. You have to care, not some of the time, but all of the time.

My normal contribution to a season is not heroic, by any means.

My contribution has been to get to at least one Red Sox game a year.

Usually, that means at Fenway Park in Boston, where a day or evening at the park is the equivalent of a monthly car payment.

A couple of times it meant taking in an away game, the Red Sox at Baltimore.

But it’s a tradition that I managed to keep up for many years: At least one game a year in person.

Until this year.

I didn’t make a game with either of my two adult children, which usually happens. I didn’t make a game with my wife, which usually happens.

It was a tradition that spanned a decade that included two World Series and almost the guarantee that they’d at least get into the playoffs.

Not this year.

Somehow, other parts of my life got in the way. Ultimately, I took my eye off the ball.

They started going into their September slide and I was selfishly thinking they would rebound, just as they did after their miserable start in April.

But they didn’t rebound. And I continued to go about my merry way, thinking that the unthinkable couldn’t happen.

But it did.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

I won’t let it happen again. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.