Does John Henry Still Care About The Red Sox?

News is circulating that Billy Beane of Moneyball fame may acquire a chunk of the Boston Red Sox via his acquisition company and that Beane and his associates would make that portion of the Red Sox publicly traded.

When you dig a little further into the speculation, however, it appears that the baseball-lifer Beane would actually join Fenway Sports Group (the parent company of the Sox) and oversee the company's European soccer portfolio.

FSG also owns Liverpool FC, one of the biggest brand's in the world's biggest sport, and an organization that is currently printing money at a quicker rate than the Red Sox.

So while the move of bringing Beane aboard the ownership train may excite Sox fans who think he'll help work some of his magic in Beantown (pun intended), it may actually signal a shift in FSG's priorities, from a Red Sox-centric view to a global brand riding the coattails of Liverpool FC.

On Thursday's edition of The Drive, Jim Churchill, Ernie Clark and myself had a heated discussion about what the deal could mean as we tried to enter the mind of Henry.