Great piece on 12-game winner and Chief Executive Ass Kicker Josh Beckett in today’s Globe, but it would have been even greater if the editor had whittled it down to just these sentences:

Reporters surrounded Varitek in the locker room and asked how he was hurt.

“Why am I not 100 percent?’’ Varitek said.

He then lifted a towel and revealed his legs, almost completely black and blue from knee to toe.

Varitek said Beckett is the reason for a lot of those bruises.

All just part of the game, or the result of a pre-game “pep talk” from the Commander? When it comes to Beckett, I prefer not to know for sure, as I think that psuedo-American Psycho edge suits him just fine.

Meanwhile, the countdown to the trade deadline continues. And while I think Godot will show up at Fenway before Halladay, I’m fairly confident that a Beckett-Halladay-Lester triumvirate could whip the Yankees, Rays, Russians and Cybermen combined.