If you’re developing a personality based around sports fandom, it’s easiest and most satisfying to root for either a perennial loser or a perennial winner. Cheer for the scrappy underdog and you can maintain a perpetual chip on your shoulder, while avoiding accusations of bandwagon-jumping or front-running. Cheer for the all-powerful behemoth and you can maintain an attitude of superiority, mitigating the fact that everybody else hates you with constant opportunities for celebration.

It’s a lot harder to get pumped up to support a .500 team, devoting your passion to a pursuit with seemingly few highs and few lows, neither exceptional nor pathetic, constantly in tepid flux.

The idea that there’s no drama in mediocrity is swiftly and efficiently defused in Greg Whiteley’s The Clubhouse: A Year With the Red Sox, an eight-part documentary series focusing on the 2024 Boston Red Sox, a team that finished 81-81.

It was a team that,...