That Jon Lester would start off 2-4 with a 6.51 ERA: Hey, even Superman got his ass handed to him by Phineas the Wonder Pony from time to time. Lester is merely human–a fact I often forgot during 2008, when the miracles seemed to come fast and furious every time he took the hill. Watching him struggle this season has been particularly gut-wrenching for me, because of all the players on this team, Lester’s the guy I always want to see tearing it up but good and leaving long trails of awesome in his wake. But I’m confident that a return to 2008 form is imminent, so the booze and happy pills are clearly working for me.
That Jason Bay would be unleashing such torrents of beat-down: It still freaks me out to see David Ortiz stride to the plate, grimacing like an extra from Escape from New York, and go down with barely a whimper, while Jason Bay, who looks about as menacing as the kid who ran the Sci-Fi Film and Roleplaying Club in high school, is knocking long balls with extreme prejudice. But the Great White Canadian has officially supplanted Papi as the guy we need at the plate when we need the big hit.
That Jason Varitek would have more home runs than David Ortiz. What more can really be said about Papi’s power outage? Whether it’s because he’s really 46 years old, or he just misses Manny too much, or a steady diet of D’Angelos “Big Papi” sandwiches has packed his intestines with so much meat that he just can’t swivel the midsection like he used to, I can’t say. But I do know that after the way he threw us all on his back in 2004, like a slightly more bad-ass version of that dog from The Never Ending Story, I can never count the man out.
That I’d be surviving in a Remy-free world: I’ve long maintained that a Sox game without Remy would be like hooking myself up to a machine that delivered non-stop cock punches. But knowing that the Dawg is on the mend, and finding the Eck’s hipster lingo and Love Boat guest star-quality hair oddly engaging, has helped ease the pain. More significantly, Remy’s absence has made me realize that I may have been underestimating the inestimable talents of Don Orsillo, who’s been carrying the flag quite nicely for his fallen comrade.
That I’d still be blaming Julio Lugo for all of the world’s ills: I used to think that the reason Amalie Benjamin would have nothing to do with me is because I’m a pale, goofy, untanned jerk of a guy–who, even worse, writes a Red Sox blog. But now I realize it’s just Lugo’s fault.
