The Red Sox have their captain back. Its over, the drama, the speculation, the angst is all over…thankfully. Bottom line, Tek is the right catcher for the Sox right now and the Sox are certainly the right team for Tek. Lots has been said or written over the last couple months as part of this drama. Maybe the media has had more then a small part in making it a drama. Some even in this column, so guilty as charged. I gave thought this week to writing two colums one saying welcome back and one a retrospective and having the site push live the correct one when the time came..I decided not to, I knew Tek would be back , it just made too much sense. If you go back and re-read the columns you will see this is the kind of deal I had heard from sources that Tek was going to receive from the Sox. The only question was, would he sign it. When the calendar page flipped to January I knew it had to be spell a return to the Sox. Nothing else made sense for the Sox or Tek.

If they wanted to trade they would have done it when they signed Penny and Smoltz , because one of their prospects would have been “expendable”. The real indication that Tek wanted to truly come back, and had accepted a deal like Posada’s, was not in the making, should have come to everyone’s attention when the Boras camp starting spinning the stories about Tek instructing him to only talk money with the Sox. That’s simple agent spin to save face for the player. This way you show he was loyal and never wanted to leave and can be used as an explanation for vastly over estimating a players value in the market place.

Meanwhile, my sources tell me Boras contacted teams, including the Dodgers, to gauge interest (while they did not exactly talk MONEY). Boras, Tek, and the Red Sox found a great way to make all parties happy, or as happy as they could be with the situation. With the extra incentives based on games played, Tek has the chance to earn closer to what he thought he was worth and the Sox don’t have to pay based on speculation, or if at the age of 37 he has a major injury. The only loser is Tito; he really dislikes these clauses because of the position it puts the manager in. Especially come the end of the season.

While I NEVER thought Tek was worth the money Boras floated back in October, I do agree Tek has great value to the team. If you want to just look at stats and compare him to other catchers your missing a big part of the picture. Just look at the Sox win/loss record after Tek went down in 2006, while he is not the hitter today he was in 06 — he was still far froma  premier hitter that year. For whatever reason ..and give Tito lots of credit here…the Sox have had some great teams these last 4 years but never the best team on paper to start the season… they just win. Why are members of Red Sox nation more worried about a .220 hitter coming back then they are worried about the Yankees? The reason is the Yankees have had the best team on paper before, but the game is not paid on paper and the Yankees are missing that “IT” that makes a collection of players a team and makes a team winners. Tito, Papi, Tek are some of the biggest reasons the Sox have that “it”.

There will be time enough later to dissect how the Red Rox brain trust lead by Theo, did not see this coming. Why they did not do more to groom a new catcher. Why they traded so many catchers that have gone on to solid careers. Why oh why did they make that trade to bring Mirabelli back…. Those questions are for later for now…

Oh captian, my captain , Red Sox nation salutes you and welcome back!