"Boston's annual baseball writers' dinner is always dropped neatly into the dead of winter, bringing the time-honored and always reliable Hot Stove to an otherwise cold January night.

The unspoken theme of the dinner, in most years, is optimism. Regardless of how the Red Sox performed during the previous season, the hardball scribes' annual party is an unofficial cleaning of the slate.

It's also an occasion to celebrate individual excellence, such as former Yale catcher Ryan Lavarnway, on hand last night to receive the Greg Montalbano Award as the Sox' minor league player of the year."