A cut below

I apologize for the lame titles. It's hard to come up with something witty all the time. This column actually wouldn't be that bad on its own, except for the fact that Dan has been crapping all over Beckett this year and keeps flip-flopping. Doeshe suck? Is he an ace? Is he a young pitcher who sometimes sucks but will eventually figure it out? The third one is the reasonable one, so you know right off the bat that Dan will take one of the first two views. Today, he's an ace. Last week he sucked. I give up.

Tuesday, the estimable Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated, a scribe not given to hyperbole, wrote, ``Josh Beckett is to Boston what Jeff Weaver was to the Yankees: the ace that never was . . . Beckett's head isn't ace-quality. He looked like a raw high school pitcher on Saturday, paying no attention to runners . . . and continuing to get his fat fastball smashed around."

Complimenting Tom Verducci, who is "not given to hyperbole," then citing this rubbish heap of a paragraph, makes me laugh. Jeff Weaver and Josh Beckett are not comparable players at all, except that they're both right-handed pitchers. And declaring that "Beckett's head isn't ace-quality?" How would he know? Is Beckett 40 and at the end of his career? Is Verducci a psychiatrist? Give me a break. And let's not pretend like this is only his opinion. Dan cites other authors when they say something nasty that he wants to say, yet claim he didn't say it.

In late July, he signed a contract extension that will pay him $10 million a season for three years. His troubles started shortly after inking the new deal.

First of all, it was signed before the All-Star Break, which makes it early/mid-July. Second of all, he was already having problems before that, although maybe Dan doesn't remember because the extension was announced the day he pitched the 1-0 shutout over Kansas City. Before that, he had a 5.12 ERA. Now, it's 5.21. Not much difference. But I think this is just a way of indirectly crapping on Theo, anyway.

This column was less poisonous than the other recent ones, though.

Edit: Found this nice piece on the Oldtimers charity game, which raised funds for cystic fibrosis and cerebral palsy, last night. The kid in the picture is Dan's son, Sam. Let's hope his participation in this event means the apple is falling far from the tree.