Our long national nightmare is over. The 2018 Division Champion banner has been returned to the Red Sox. The schmucks who picked it up off the highway returned it to the team. I can only imagine the Red Sox brass saw this guys story on the news and scrambled to find a way to get back their precious banner. Henry, Werner, et al just had to have spent all of Wednesday plotting on what they could give Louie Iacuzzi and company. So it surprised me today to read that the complete opposite happened. Vinny Delpino got nothing! From Boston.com:
A team spokeswoman told The Boston Globe‘s Travis Anderson the banner was brought into Fenway Park Wednesday afternoon. Those who delivered the lost item received no form of compensation, she said, despite the wishes of the 44-year-old Malden man who had initially located the banner.
What? Nothing? You would think a billion dollar operation like the Red Sox would stop at nothing to get back the franchises crown jewel. They never would do anything like just have another banner made:
If the missing banner had not been returned, Tony Lafuente, owner of Flagraphics, said his company had already produced a replica that would be ready to go. “We already have a new banner made,” Lafuente told Anderson. “I’ve been doing work for the Boston Red Sox since 1992. Nothing ever happened like this.”
Nothing ever happened like this? What are you trying to say?
Lafuente also told Anderson that Iacuzzi and his friends “should be ashamed of themselves,” saying “those guys stole my banner.”
Wow. To be fair, Iacuzzi denies stealing it.
“If I didn’t pick it up, a hundred people would have ran over it,” he said. “I don’t want a million dollars. I don’t need a million dollars. All I wanted was to maybe bring my family, my friends to a [expletive] baseball game, maybe meet a player.”
So no playoff game for Mario, Luigi and the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom. Couldn’t have happened to two better guys.
The Last Stawp 
