Ben Volin
ON BASEBALLSports
THE BOSTON GLOBE TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019 | BOSTONGLOBE.COM/SPORTSD
TVHIGHLIGHTS
Baseball: Cubs-Phillies, 7 p.m., MLB
Baseball: Red Sox-Indians, 7:10 p.m., NESN
Listings,D6
Brown loses grievance
Raiders receiver can’t use old helmet.NFL notebook, D2INSIDE
Morethanfootballatplay
FOXBOROUGH — The problem
with growing old is it becomes harder
to put your own priorities first.
We have more responsibilities put
on our plate. More people count on us.
I’d love to play golf every weekend and
take trips to Vegas, but my wife kind
of needs me to help raise our two chil-
dren.
That’s where Tom Brady appears to
be right now with his football career —
stuck between “me” and “we.”
Speaking for nearly 30 minutes on
WEEI’s “Greg Hill Show” Monday
morning, Brady reiterated once again
his desire to play football until he’s 45
years old. He just turned 42 last week,
so that would mean three, or even
four, more seasons.
“I’ve said 45 for a long time, and I
hope I can make it there,” Brady said.
“I’m close, and I’m going to re-evalu-
ate after the year and see how I feel.
And hopefully I can just keep doing it.”
Brady is in his 20th year with the
Patriots, and 29th playing organized
football. He is a modern-day Peter
Pan; if he had his way, he would play
forever. Brady doesn’t really know
what he would do with himself with-
out football. He doesn’t want to grow
up.
“I’ve never been forced to make
that decision,” he said. “I haven’t really
had to focus the time and energy on
that. It’s mostly been hobbies. Certain-
ly off the field I have some business in-
terests, but nothing really kind of feels
the way football does. I love being out
there playing, and I love being outthere with the guys.”
But Brady’s decision to play beyond
2019 isn’t totally up to him. There are
a lot of outside forces pulling at him.
His family is a big one. It has been
no secret the last few years that Gisele
wants her husband to retire. She’s
worried about concussions and his
health. She wants to travel with the
family. She has to put some business
opportunities off to the side during
the football season, when Brady is un-
available.
Already, Brady has had to give up
spring football. But getting ready for
the fall still takes up a lot of his time.
“It’s a big commitment, and it’s a
lot of time and energy I put into get-
ting ready for practice,” he said. “The
mental part of the game is not the
challenge. It’s just really working hard
ONFOOTBALL,PageD2NIC ANTAYA FOR THE GLOBE
Tom Brady remains the football fanatic he’s been for two decades with
the Patriots, though real life pulls his focus elsewhere more by the day.Lowry won’t play for Team USA
Raptors guard withdraws because of a sore thumb.D6Some can’t-miss Celtics games
Adam Himmelsbach assesses 2019-20 slate.D6YoungBetts
gratefulfor
demotion
Book details harsh treatment
veterans gave rookie in 2014
An excerpt from Globe Red Sox reporter
Alex Speier’s first book, “Homegrown: How the
Red Sox Built a Champion from the Ground
Up,” which tells the story of the history-mak-
ing 2018 World Series champions. It will be re-
leased in stores Tuesday.
By early June [of 2014] [Mookie Betts] was
in Triple-A Pawtucket. Red Sox players and
coaches were aware of the twenty-one-year-
old’s electrifying performance in the minors,
the daily stories of his remarkable feats, and
were antsy for his arrival in the big leagues. In
Triple-A, Betts quickly gave further validation
to those sentiments.
In his second game for the PawSox, he
stepped to the plate against the Durham Bulls
(the top minor league affiliate of the Tampa
Bay Rays) in the top of the eleventh inning in a
contest tied, 7–7. In the scouts’ section behind
the plate, where Red Sox coordinators George
Lombard and David Howard sat, chatter in-
creased. One scout of another team said that
Betts would go deep. Another scoffed that Bet-
ts had no shot at clearing the fences. Betts al-
most immediately blasted a pitch over Dur-
ham’s Blue Monster, a thirty-two-foot-high,
Fenway-like wall in left field.
From then on, the scouts doubted Betts at
their own peril. In Triple-A, he hit .346 with a
.417 OBP, .503 slugging mark, and 5 homers
in 45 games. By late June, in the span of
SPEIER,PageD3
Sox stumble again
Santana’sHR
inninthgives
wintoIndians
Peter Abraham
ON BASEBALLShort-armed
fromstartto
ghastlyfinish
CLEVELAND — The calendar says
the season has seven weeks remain-
ing. But it’s over for the Red Sox after
Monday night’s 6-5 loss to the Cleve-
land Indians. The only realistic goal
remaining is to finish with a winning
record, and even that seems unlikely
given the state of the pitching staff.
It’s not because Carlos Santana
lined a hanging slider just over the
wall in left-center to give the Indians a
walkoff victory. It’s because of what
led the Sox to that point.
With their bullpen depleted after a
10-inning loss on Sunday, manager
Alex Cora was determined only to use
Brandon Workman to protect a lead.
So even though Workman was warm-
ing up when the Sox tied the game
with two outs in the top of the ninth
on Xander Bogaerts’s RBI double,
Marcus Walden stayed in for an extra
inning.
ONBASEBALL,PageD5By Julian McWilliams
GLOBE STAFF
Indians 6
RedSox5CLEVELAND — What
looked like a Red Sox
comeback win ended in
a walkoff defeat Monday night.
Xander Bogaerts had tied the
game, 5-5, on a two-out RBI double to
right field off Indians closer Brad
Hand in the ninth.
But in the bottom half, Carlos San-
tana led off by crushing a homer to
left-center off Marcus Walden. Just
like that, the Red Sox lost once more,
6-5. The Indians are having the sum-mer the Red Sox have been waiting on
from their club. The win placed the
Indians in sole possession of first in
the American League Central for the
first time since April 20.
The Sox, meanwhile, have dropped
to 17½ games behind the Yankees
and eight games out of the second
REDSOX,PageD4WILLIAM MORROW & COMPANYGlobe writer Alex Speier’s book “Home-
grown” looks into building of a champion.
TONY DEJAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Eduardo Rodriguez allowed two home runs in Monday’s loss,
including this three-run shot by Jose Ramirez (rear).2018 FILE/MATTHEW J. LEE/GLOBE STAFFAfter a rough reception in 2014, Mookie
Betts has excelled with the Red Sox.
ºRedSox’2020schedulereleased;
openatToronto,visitWrigley.D4TONY DEJAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Indians’ Carlos Santana celebrates after his leadoff homer in the ninth inning allowed Cleveland to walk off with a win over the Sox.