A skinny Josh Becket and John Lackey in Kevin Fowler's "I Like Beer" Music Video. (YouTube Screenshot)
Soap Opera - noun - a serial drama performed originally on a daytime radio or television program and chiefly characterized by tangled interpersonal situations and melodramatic or sentimental treatment.
Aside for the daytime part, I'd say it'd be fair to asses the current Red Sox situation as a full blown Soap Opera. Everyday there's a new leak, a new anonymous source, and a new denial. Channel 7 News has now thrown it's annonymous hat in the ring, claiming not only did Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, and John Lackey drink beer in the clubhouse - but that they also drank beer in the dugout.
On nights when they were not pitching, Beckett, Lester and Lackey would exit the dugout as early as the 6th inning, walk back to the clubhouse, and fill cups with Bud Light beer. They would then return to the dugout with cups of beer and drink while watching the game.
Before I tore my ACL playing basketball in March, I played in a Softball league during the Summer and Fall. The league is loosely competitive, but still, my friends and I would buy some Bud Lights, fill up a few Nalgene bottles, and drink them during the game. Beer and softball aren't exactly foreign entities, they're actually a glorious combination - but comparing my friends and I drinking beers to the Red Sox top three paid pitchers isn't exactly fair. We play in a co-ed D Division softball league for fun - they play in front of thousands nightly for a hell of a lot of money. No matter where they were drinking, be it in the clubhouse or dugout, it really doesn't matter to me. They should have been able to wait until after work before popping open a cold one. Period. That's what we all do.
It took Channel 7's report to pull the other two Amigos out of their seclusion. But the tough guys couldn't even speak for themselves, they had to do it through a Red Sox Press Release. Let's take a look at both of their statements.
Josh Beckett
“I cannot let this allegation go without response; enough is enough. I admit that I made mistakes along the way this season, but this has gone too far. To say that we drank in the dugout during the game is not true.”John Lackey
“There are things that went on this season that shouldn’t have happened, but this latest rumor is not true, and I felt that it was important to try to stop this from going any further.”
These guys are a bunch of frauds. Beckett's pulled the tough guy routine his whole career, and right now he's looking like a Paper Tiger. First off, denying this latest charge, while also trying to neatly sweep the other allegations under the rug via a Press Release is bourgeois and cowardly. Tough Guy Beckett can't look the fan base in the eye and say I screwed up, I'm sorry, won't happen again. He has to pull a Lackey and point his finger at others.
Like I said, where they were drinking isn't the point. The point is that these clowns cared less than the fans, fellow teammates, and apparently the Owners. The great Hunter S. Thompson wrote about the first time Lyndon Johnson was elected to Congress in 1948 in his book "Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie", and the below is a quote from this account:
Lyndon was running about 10 points behind, with only nine days to go... He was sunk in despair. He was desperate... he called his equally depressed campaign manager and instructed him to call a press conference at two or two-thirty (just after lunch on a slow news day) and accuse his high-riding opponent (the pig farmer) of having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children... His campaign manager was shocked. 'We can't say that, Lyndon,' he said. 'It's not true.' 'Of course it's not,' Johnson barked at him, 'but let's make the bastard deny it.
Maybe this is the perverse logic that was needed with the dugout story to finally drag all Three Amigos out of their hideouts. The beauty of the story is that there was enough truth in it to make them comment, who cares if it's true - make the bastards deny it. I will admit that this parade of unnamed sources is just as gutless as the Three Amigo's inability to take ownership for their Frat mentality in 2011, and I do hope they end soon, they're not needed anymore.
Everybody knows the September Collapse happened due to our starting pitchers, and now we know why. They were spoiled, uninspired, and lazy. You wanted answers, and now you have them. For the sake of all of us though I hope we can begin to move on, because I for one am sick of this Goddamn Soap Opera.
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