Jonny Gomes has played for five teams over the course of his 11-year Major League Baseball career. He has never experienced anything quite like Boston.
Gomes, whose hard-nosed style of play was emblematic of the 2013 Red Sox, is among the players who have exchanged a series of group text messages this offseason. The daily conversations, which mostly are baseball related, symbolize Boston’s clubhouse chemistry, which Gomes recently acknowledged is something special.
“Most guys, season ends, they go their separate ways,” Gomes told the Boston Herald. “I’ve worked out with guys from other teams, and I’ll be like, ‘Hey, how’s so and so?’ They’ll go, ‘I don’t know,’ and you’re like, ‘You don’t know? That’s the guy that hits behind you.’ But this, it’s [expletive] every day, all day. I don’t think there’s one person’s wife that isn’t sick of it. It’s like a friggin’ frat house.”
Gomes was a key member of the Red Sox’ fraternity last season, producing multiple big hits, including a three-run homer in Game 4 of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. While Gomes likely will split time with Daniel Nava again in 2014, the 33-year-old still hopes to be the grease that helps the Red Sox’ productive machine function.
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