Swift going to Sox just feels right

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Solving the eternal Red Sox Riddle can’t be this simple, can it?

Pick up a free agent righthanded pitcher, but not just any veteran starter. Someone who is a true Red Sox at heart. Someone who just got lost along the way and somehow wound up pitching on the West Coast.

His first exposure to big league ball would have come when his father took him to a game at Fenway Park. He’d have grown up falling asleep to the voices of Ken Coleman and Ned Martin on the radio.

Of course he’d be from a New England state. Red Sox country. Maybe Vermont or New Hampshire. Or Maine.

Such a pitcher just could be the long-sought antidote to the Curse of the Bambino, couldn’t he?

Yeah. Makes sense. How better to right the cosmic wrong of selling the greatest player ever than by buying the contract of a quiet New Englander who isn’t worried as much about money as he is about helping the Sox win a World Series again? There’s closure to that. It fits.

Wouldn’t it be this pitcher on the mound when the Sox did finally win it all for the first time since 1918? Wouldn’t this pitcher be destined to throw that last monumental strike?

Wouldn’t this pitcher have to be William Charles Swift?

OK, enough fantasizing. Real-life baseball hardly ever works like this. Not to mention there’s still a strike on.

Yes, Bill Swift of South Portland and the University of Maine and the San Francisco Giants is a free agent. Yes, he is openly talking about how much he’d love to finish his career in Boston and how he might even take less money to do it. And, yes, his agent has talked with Red Sox GM Dan Duquette.

That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen,” assessed Swift, who will celebrate his 33rd birthday on Thursday with his family in their new home in Paradise Valley, Ariz. “I’d love to play in Boston, but we’ll see. I know they’ve got a new manager. With the strike, it’s hard to know when things will get settled. I’m not going to get my hopes up.”

Swift didn’t say anything about not raising the hopes of Mainers, though. For those who have watched Swift’s career blossom since his high school days, his going to the Red Sox seems so… right.

Swift knows how the folks back home are excited about this. He knows because he knows what it is to be a Red Sox fan.

“I remember as a kid we went down to Fenway all the time. My favorite players were Yaz and Fred Lynn. So it would be kind of neat to put the uniform on,” he confessed.

Neat. Exactly.

Then the adult side of Swift kicked in, the side that protects against disappointment by pointing out a con for every pro.

“I think sometimes it’s tough for a New England player to go back there, though. I know Bob Stanley played there and he didn’t always have a lot of support,” Swift observed quietly.

Stanley… Jeff Reardon… Both New England-born Red Sox pitchers left the team to a chorus of boos, didn’t they?

No, being from Red Sox country is no guarantee of success. Duquette will be looking at a lot of things while shopping in the free agent market, but hometown isn’t apt to be one of them.

Still… There’s more working for Swift than being a local boy, isn’t there?

When he’s healthy he is still one of the best starters in baseball, a sinkerballing, groundball machine. How good would those grounders look in Fenway?

“I had good success there when I was with Seattle,” recalled Swift, who was with the Mariners from 1985-91. “When I struggle it’s usually with lefties. It’s a big park in right and right-center, which helps me.”

No, this is not being parochial. There are too many areas where Swift’s strengths match Red Sox deficiencies and vice versa.

Duquette will undoubtedly wrestle with the decision.

The heart says Swift is one year removed from a 21-8 record, a 2.82 ERA and finishing second in the National League Cy Young race.

The head says he has been injury prone. He was on the disabled list twice this past season. He’s 33. He’s a gamble.

But isn’t every pitcher?

Bill Swift wants to pitch for the Red Sox.

Duquette should sign him. It might not be scientific. But it feels right.