And so it was that the Red Sox went soft

The Red Sox principal owner John Henry is a man of numbers. He's made millions in investing, hired the godfather of all stat geeks Bill James to advise his team, and can even expound on the relationship between fractal geometry and the outcome of one-run games. (I made one of those up.)

But who knew he was such a man of letters?

According to an exhaustive Boston magazine profile of John Henry, 59, and his soon-to-be wife Linda Pizzuti, Henry wooed the 30-year-old real estate developer with emails like this one:

I don't have any illusions about capturing your heart. But the world is brighter, better, lighter and warmer when a man imbues a woman he knows-even tabula rasa-with the attributes I believe reside in you. It's the small things that ultimately matter. The subtle things.... No response is necessary because a man doesn't need nearly as much as he thinks he does.

How could any woman resist such pro$e?