It doesn’t make any fashion sense, but I’ve always wanted the Red Sox to go back to wearing their 1970s uniforms, the ones that looked like pajamas with the pullover shirts and the red caps with the blue “B” and bill.

Those were the uniforms I grew up with, and ever since the Sox returned to the classic button-down jerseys with the midnight navy blue caps in 1979, something just hasn’t seemed quite right to me. If I owned them, I’d go back to the 1975 look in a heartbeat, even if the sight of Matt Albers spilling out of a polyester pullover would ultimately lead to rampant blindness throughout New England.

We thought the Red Sox most of us grew up with died in Doug Mientkiewicz’s glove on Oct. 28, 2004. No longer would they be associated with curses and collapses. The Cubs were the ones who were cursed. The Yankees collapsed. The Red Sox, constructed by a boy wonder GM named Theo Epstein, were the standard of the new century, especially when they added a second championship in 2007.

In the four years following that last title, Boston made the playoffs twice and missed twice. A Game 7 loss to Tampa Bay in the 2008 ALCS faded from memory with none of the rage and resentment that accompanied all previous postseason failures. A three-game sweep by the Angels in 2009 just made everybody hate  J.D. Drew and Daisuke Matsuzaka more. The franchise’s honeymoon remained intact.

With the exception of their bitter divorce from Manny Ramirez, the post-2007 Red Sox stayed away from off-the-field controversy. Boston columnists whined about how boring they were.

Apparently, Red Sox fans agreed. Epstein dubbed 2010 a “bridge year” and they responded with apathy. TV ratings plunged. The front office panicked, bid farewell to Adrian Beltre and Victor Martinez and overpayed Carl Crawford to generate some excitement.

In spite of Crawford, excitement is what they got — a dreadful start, four months of championship-caliber baseball, and then the September swoon to top all September swoons.

The drama only escalated into the off-season. There were two bizarre press conferences with manager Terry Francona, the second held to announce his firing. A smear campaign that neither the Romney nor Obama campaigns will dare to duplicate this fall followed Francona out of town. Ownership was so eager to get rid of Epstein it didn’t even try to get anything useful in exchange. And the chicken-and-beer scandal embarrassed the entire organization. 

Enter Bobby Valentine, already the most polarizing person in a Red Sox uniform since Roger Clemens. Much to the manager’s delight, he has been the center of attention ever since his hiring.

While the spotlight hogging has taken some of the pressure off his players, Valentine has not been able to ease the angst of the fans. Wave upon wave of bad news and omens fuels the doom and gloom, from injuries to Crawford and Andrew Bailey to Kevin Youkilis’ troubling spring and pitching depth concerns.

But that hasn’t stopped Valentine from trying to make more noise. Earlier this week, he acknowledged he’s doing a weekly radio show in New York City with Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay. It’s almost a given that he will say something to rile up Yankee fans and/or the New York media, which, admittedly, is never a bad thing. It might inject some new life into a rivalry that seemed to jump the shark the last couple of years.

It’s a non-story, but of course, the Boston media is doing all it can to fan it into a full-blown controversy.

Throw in one of those classic Opening Day losses worthy of 1984, 1988 and 2003, and now no one is complaining about being bored.

Drama on the field and off. A stacked lineup and questionable pitching. As Don Orsillo would say, the Red Sox are back, and they’re back big.

These are the Red Sox all of us of voting age grew up following. I’d rather they just go back to wearing the red hats.