Josh Beckett – Pitching and Off Days – His Business

During the baseball season, once every fifth day or so,  Josh Beckett goes to work, if he feels okay. Some days his muscles ache. Some days his stomach is upset, from guzzling beer and scarfing down fried chicken the previous day. But if everything is okay, he goes to work. If not , he just plays golf.

There are a lot of things about Beckett that the public does not know. One of the things that the public does know, is that he could care less what they think. if you don’t believe it, just ask him. But don’t ask him about his off days.

According to Beckett, he gets 18 days off a year and thinks he deserves a little time to himself. Apparently his calendar is full on those 18 days, and what he does on those days is  his business.  Fair enough.

The problem is, Josh Beckett is a pitcher.  Regular Red Sox players have 18 days off a year. Pitchers have many more. And as we already said, he works every fifth day or so. That works out to around 32 or 33 starts in year. If we want to talk about his salary, that means he’s making close to a half-million dollars per start on his workdays.

Most hard-working Red Sox fans would be okay with that if on those workdays Beckett would put in something more than a token effort. To say that he only gets 18 days off per year is shading the truth.

Last night was one of those occasions when Beckett chose to go to work.  It must’ve been one of those nights when he wasn’t really feeling it. Beckett gave up seven runs in 2 1/3 innings. 7 runs for 7 outs. There is a song title in there somewhere,  I just know there is.

The point is that’s not the kind of effort Red Sox fans expect on workdays.

Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine surely must be missing his days at ESPN. Great employee lunch and dinner buffets, he got to say what he wanted to say, and had makeup and wardrobe people to make him look good.  Since the Kevin Youkilis mis-speak, Valentine has carefully measured his words when speaking to the press.

At this point he’s probably a little leery about speaking with anyone.  “I’ve never seen a pitcher get hurt playing golf,”  “I didn’t think he was injured when he was skipped,” Valentine said.

That the way to get his back Bobby. That’s not quite the way he would have put it were he still working at ESPN, and before this year is out, he may very well be back at ESPN.

If Josh Beckett goes out and gives two or three good starts all of this will be forgotten. If not, we have not seen the bottom.