Got off a plane at Logan last night around the third inning — roughly the time I imagine Theo was phoning Los Bros Hendricks to cement that Roger Clemens deal — so I missed much of the carnage. And the optimist inside of me figures that the latest outings by Schilling and Beckett were blips on the radar; events we’ll point back to during the 2006 Rolling Rally and say, “Heck, remember those nights we thought a massive chunk of flame and death was hurtling toward the earth?”
This morning, sadly, it’s the pessimist in me who’s seized control. Yeah, he’s kicked the optimist in the jimmy, gagged him with a Calvin Schiraldi T-shirt and tossed him in the closet. So now I’m stammering around the place, asking, “what if Josh and Curt hit the skids for an extended dance mix of a summer?” Who do we turn to in those troubled times? Lenny DiNardo? The Wakefield-Bard Experience? The lumber of Wily Mo and Mikey Lo?
It’s just one of those moments, folks. On the bright side, Beckett didn’t get kicked around like this during his first Red Sox start — something that would have had the Samaritans Hotline reaching out to AccounTemps to handle the overage. And if we wipe out the Yankees in two games at the Fens next week, I’m sure I’ll be laminating my A-Gon posters and ordering a box of Delcarmen shirts.
Right now, it’s torment. But as Beckett himself says, his next pitch will be his most important.
We move on. We move up. Long live Youk.
