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Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Meet the Massachusetts man (and lifelong Red Sox fan) who designs and delivers the team's beloved T-shirts
Consider it a physical manifestation of the camaraderie and vibes that have developed over the summer. Advertisement 'I feel like we lead the league in T-shirts right now,' said hitting coach Peter Fatse, something of a ringleader in this accidental trend. 'It's one of those morale boosters over the course of a season. It's a long year. When you have things like that that rejuvenate the guys, they see something new in their locker, it's fun.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Jarren Duran said: 'Those kinds of T-shirts mean something happened to have us make those T-shirts. So we all know the joke behind it or the story behind it.' Related : And Trevor Story: 'It's kind of our brand of baseball. We're telling a little story through the shirts. Paul does an amazing job of making that come to life. It's something cool that I think a lot of guys love to rep, and we appreciate it.' Advertisement The origin centers around Procopio and Fatse. Procopio, 36, long has known the Fatse family through Western Mass. baseball circles, and he has known Peter specifically for more than a decade, since he helped outfit Fatse's teams at his former local training facility with uniforms and gear. During spring training, Fatse reached out to Procopio, who last year turned his screen printing/embroidery company, Primo Products, into a full-time gig. Fatse sought stuff displaying his '9-on-1' philosophy — nine batters against one pitcher — for his hitters, and Procopio came through. That was the first of at least eight shirts in the Procopio/Red Sox partnership. Pitching coach Andrew Bailey has requested a couple, including a Crochet-inspired iteration that says 'Beast,' which is the ace's catch-all nickname for his teammates (and, in turn, their fitting nickname for him). Justin Willard, director of pitching, had Procopio fashion shirts that read 'Fuego' on the front and feature Pedro Martinez on the back, a trophy of sorts for any pitcher in the organization who reaches 100 miles per hour with his fastball. 'I've just become known,' Procopio said in a telephone interview, 'as Pete's guy.' In early July, when Gonzalez described himself — fairly — as feeling 'tremendously locked in' at the plate, Story loved it. He decided that such a sentiment needed to be commemorated. Working with Procopio to turn it into a shirt, they settled on Miami Vice-style pink and blue lettering (a nod to Gonzalez's hometown) for that quote across the front, plus Gonzalez's No. 23 on the back. Romy Gonzalez said the "Tremendously Locked In" T-shirt was the first time he had been celebrated in a clubhouse like that. Courtesy/Paul Procopio Gonzalez, a role player enjoying by far the best of his five seasons in the majors, said it was the first time he was celebrated in such a way by his club. Advertisement 'There's different ways to build up your teammates. That's a way that I've found,' Story said. 'It's just a way to make him feel good, but also it's part of our team. It's a little bit of a mantra, too. It came about organically and that's the best part about it.' Gonzalez said: 'I thought it was sick.' A few weeks later, Procopio hit Fatse with a question: 'What is going on in the clubhouse right now?' What was buzzy? What would make for a fun shirt? 'Everybody,' Fatse told him, 'is saying, 'Turbulence.' ' The team's plane ride from Boston to Minneapolis on July 27 was fraught. Bad weather forced the team to land in Detroit. Many players got sick. The effects impacted them and others into That infamous flight, harrowing in the moment, has become hilarious in hindsight. 'One of the funniest things is Greg Weissert . . . on the crazy plane ride,' Duran said. 'We were about to land and then we had to re-circle around for like 30 more minutes. He just kept talking about, 'I love the grind. Keep giving it to me. When you think you're done grinding, you're still grinding.' That kind of stuff is funny. People are dying, people are throwing up, people are running to the bathroom. He's over there just absolutely loving every bit of the chaos. 'Little stories like that is what makes teams really close. Even though we were on a crazy plane ride, we have some stuff to laugh about.' Related : Then it became a rallying cry — and an on-base celebration, players extending their arms like plane wings and pretending to teeter after a hit. Advertisement Procopio got to work. His final design featured 'Turbulence' written across the front, an outline on each side of a player doing the arms-out call to the dugout, and, naturally, the head of Wally the Green Monster. About 48 hours later, he made the two-hour drive to Fenway Park to hand-deliver the fresh product. 'I don't know how he does it, but he gets it within two days to us,' Fatse said. 'Boom.' For Procopio — who normally works with youth, high school or college teams, and a wide range of other companies who need branded apparel — this has been good business, sure. But it also is sort of unreal. He always has been a big baseball guy, playing at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams and helping coach his alma mater, Taconic High in Pittsfield, to three state titles. He was in high school for the 2004 and 2007 championships. And now the Red Sox are wearing his stuff? Every day? It is so popular among players that on Thursday he sent out another batch of Beast shirts for the hitters and Turbulence shirts for the pitchers. Each group was envious of the other. 'When was the last time you saw Jarren Duran in just a classic Red Sox baseball shirt? He's always wearing different crazy things,' Procopio said. '[In conversation with Fatse] I'm like, dude, Trevor Story makes like $20 million a year. There's no way he's like, 'Man, I love this Turbulence shirt,' right? The experience I've had is holy [expletive], he is right, these guys are wearing it everywhere. It's all they wear.' Advertisement There may well be more to come. Procopio didn't want to spoil too much — or jinx it. 'If the Sox make the playoffs,' he said, 'there are some things in the works.' Tim Healey can be reached at
Boston Globe
08-07-2025
- Sport
- Boston Globe
For much of the season, fastballs were the Red Sox' weakness. Here's how they've flipped the script.
'We're not striking out [anymore], right? I think that's telling the story. We're putting the ball in play,' said manager Alex Cora. 'We still have some holes like everybody else, but I think we're not striking out as much as we were three weeks ago.' Advertisement Asked to clarify what happened three weeks ago, Cora implicitly referenced the June 15 decision to trade Rafael Devers to the Giants as a landmark. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Different personnel. I mean, let's be honest, that's part of this,' said Cora. 'This is a different group than three weeks ago, and I think the guys that we have now, they put the ball in play. And in those situations, they catch up with the fastball against lefties and against righties. And we've just gotten better.' With Devers, the Red Sox hit .259 against four-seamers and sinkers/two-seamers (20th in MLB) while slugging .421 (16th) with a 22 percent whiff rate (28th). From the trade through the start of Monday night's game, they were hitting .270 against fastballs (11th) while slugging .440 (11th) with a 19 percent whiff rate (12th). Advertisement Those numbers were driven mostly by a best-in-baseball hot stretch from June 28-July 6, during which the Sox hit .380, slugged .592, and missed on roughly one out of every eight swings (12.6 percent) against heaters. The absence of Devers (a sky-high 33 percent whiff rate on fastballs for the Sox) and arrival of Roman Anthony (16 percent whiff rate) and Marcelo Mayer (15 percent) has led to some shift of the team's dynamics against fastballs — a notion that gained further credence on Monday, when the Sox went 7 for 15 with two home runs and three doubles against fastballs while But there's more to the recent surge than changing personnel. Ceddanne Rafaela cut his whiff rate from 24 percent on fastballs before the Devers trade to 13 percent since. While Trevor Story has had a fairly steady swing-and-miss rate against fastballs this year, he's started to punish heat in the zone, with three homers off of 95-plus-m.p.h. pitches since the beginning of June — after not hitting any in the first three years and two months of his Red Sox career. So, what's allowing the Sox to handle heat? 'Game-planning, conversation, practice — just stressing it, and just constantly reminding the guys, our approach is built off the fastball for the most part,' said Fatse. 'I think it's a lot of an approach thing. If you're getting in-between pitches and you're looking for 95 but the guy also has a breaking ball at 82 or slider at 86, you have to stay on your fastball timing.' Advertisement Still, that doesn't simply mean Fatse and the Red Sox' hitters stand in a dark room shouting, 'Stay on the fastball!' Instead, with their 'For every fastball tilt or shape, you have to have a swing to cover that,' said Fatse. 'We have ways of describing that for every guy based on their strengths.' The more individualized discussion coincides roughly with a nine-game offensive eruption in which the Red Sox have averaged 8.4 runs. It helps, of course, that the Sox have faced a number of struggling or unestablished starters during that time, with nary a sub-4.00 ERA among the last seven starters. Still, the Sox have demonstrated an adaptability that wasn't always apparent while getting repeatedly beaten by fastballs earlier this year. 'It's definitely hard to [adapt to opponents' game plans], but these guys are amazingly talented and they're hard workers, as well, so they'll be able to make adjustments a lot faster than a lot of other people,' said third baseman Alex Bregman. 'I think the last week, 10 days, has been an example of what we feel like this team is capable of. And I think the future is extremely bright here and looking forward to continuing to play with those guys. It's been fun to watch them go about their business.' Now, the Sox are hopeful that further personnel changes — specifically the returns of Masataka Yoshida as soon as Wednesday and Bregman Advertisement Alex Speier can be reached at
