I must say, I am tremendously stoked for Big Bartolo Colon’s Red Sox debut tonight. For one thing, as I wrote just a couple months ago, he adds an important sitcom element to the team–the “fat guy”:
Think about it. It’s the only sitcom-y element that’s missing from this team. We’ve got the straight-laced straight man (Tim Wakefield), the wacky neighbor (Julian Tavarez), the potentially dangerous neighbor (Mike Timlin), the neighborhood tough with a heart of gold who dispenses valuable advice at the end of each episode before kicking someone in the testicles (Josh Beckett), the short fiesty guy (Dustin Pedroia — actually, I can also see him as a sort of “tough in training” working with Beckett, kinda like Fonzie’s nephew Spike), the big huggable guy (David Ortiz), the Latka-esque silly guy with accent (Manny Ramirez), the drunk uncle who shows up at family dinners and makes an awkward pass at his 18 year-old neice (Doug Mirabelli), the friendly guy with a dark secret (Sean Casey — haven’t quite figured out what this secret will be, but it likely involves a string of unsolved murders in the Lake Ontario region and an Aquaman costume), the local cop who understands that sometimes kids just need to be kids (Mike Lowell) and Coco Crisp.
For another, what if he’s able to capture a little of the magic that earned him the 2005 Cy Young? My god, with Beckett being Beckett, Matsuzaka toting a 7-0 record, Schilling still mending in the wings and back-to-back magic from Lester and Masterson, we could find ourselves with an embarassment of riches in the pitching department.
These are the kind of problems we like to have, people. Way, way better than, say, problems with a crazy ex-girlfriend who recently got a handgun license and calls you in a vodka-induced stupor to say she’s ready to “even the score.” Not that we’d know anything about that sort of thing. We’re just sayin’.
God willing, we’ll see you at 7:05.
