The best thing about a west coast game when Derek Lowe is pitching? Once he gets zapped by a misplayed fly ball or grounder and magically transforms into The Incredible Sulk (patent pending), you can pretty much go to bed. That’s right. Sleep. Don’t bother staying up late. Because you know how it’s going to end. Especially on a night that has no Manny in the line-up. Especially on a night when Kevin “I’m an excellent thrower. Excellent thrower” Millar is in left field.

That said, even though I gave up around the fifth inning, there’s the magic of the west coast tease. You know, when you wake up in the morning, still not certain if they won or lost. Thinking, however delusional, that they might have come back. You may have missed a critical 26-run ninth that Spielberg is currently securing the rights to.

So you walk to the computer and — no, not the computer. Let’s drag this out a bit. Let’s put on NESN sports desk. And you have to time it right. Gotta hit it on that 15 minute mark when the update begins. So you do, and you hold your hand up to block the crawl at the bottom of the screen. Because you don’t want to read it, you want to hear it. You want to hear someone tell you on this otherwise perfect Friday morning that the Sox have dropped the first game of the second half and they’re sinking and the Yankees are surging and suddenly you hear it and it’s official that they’ve been pummeled by the Anaheim Angels, and you almost wish you didn’t know yet. Like the guy who wakes up from a dream just as The Olsen Twins have come over for a pillow fight, you want to go back to that warm, comfortable netherworld where there still exists the possibility that Lowe came through, the bats came alive, and Mary-Kate is tying you up with fishing line.

 

Instead, you wake up to realize the game was lost somewhere around the 45 minute mark, Manny’s hammy is acting up, Randy Johnson probably isn’t coming our way, and the Sox are looking less and less like a contender by the minute.

You also know, no matter what, you’ll be there till the end. ‘Cause you’re that kind of guy.