Josh Beckett Needs to Grow Up

Yesterday, Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe, wrote an excellent article (http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2012/02/beckett_angry_a.html) outlining pitcher Josh Beckett’s anger towards the “snitches” who made the epicurean extracurricular activities of himself and several other teammates public. Nearly five months after the news of the Red Sox clubhouse behavior went public, it shows no sign of dying down. However, Beckett’s recent reaction makes one thing abundantly clear; he has a lot of growing up to do, and as long as he continues to play the victim card, fans will continue to make it an issue.

In an interview cited in Abraham’s article, Beckett angrily decried the unknown people within the Red Sox organization who he felt were to blame for the controversy. “Somebody made that stuff up, just like somebody made up that we were doing stuff… This is stupid. I don’t understand what the big deal is. Somebody was trying to save their own ass, and it probably cost a lot of people their asses. The snitching [expletive], that’s [expletive]. It’s not good.”

What Beckett fails to recognize is that there would be nothing to “snitch” about if players were exhibiting appropriate behavior in the clubhouse and in their preparation to games. I have always considered snitching to be a word used by people who knew they were doing something wrong and were upset and trying to reassign blame when caught. It seems simple to expect that an athlete like Beckett, who made $17 million in 2011, shouldn’t need prompts as to what passes as appropriate, but he is more concerned with being called out than how he comes across as an example to his teammates or represents the Red Sox.

Nobody can say for certain to what degree, if any, the beer and chicken atmosphere in the Red Sox clubhouse contributed to their historic collapse down the stretch. Facts about Beckett that can be proven are:

• He was having an exceptionally good season up until his final 8 starts of the year, posting a 9-4 record and 2.17 ERA. He slipped to a 4-3 and 5.06 ERA in those final 8 games.
• He gained weight- generally acknowledged to be 15-20 pounds- as the season went on, and was not an eager participant in conditioning.
• He is the one figure in the fried chicken and beer controversy who has refused to back down, despite the furor it has caused. Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz had the good sense to at least express a little public regret, regardless of how they truly felt about their depiction in the matter.

If Beckett is going to continue his petulance, the only way he can regain redemption is by pitching the season of his career. Since coming to Boston his production has been up and down, and even when he has pitched well, he has been a notch or two behind aces like CC Sabathia and Justin Verlander.  Although Beckett has lost a little as he has aged, he still has some of the best pure stuff in baseball. With Boston’s weak spot being starting pitching, a Cy Young-caliber season from Beckett could greatly impact the team’s fortunes in 2012 and help distance himself from this quagmire.

It seems that Beckett is not only angry because of the perceived breach in trust from having his questionable actions publicly exposed, but also because he can’t understand why people care so much about it. The great disconnect comes because many fans can’t understand why he seems to care so little. Until Beckett realizes this, or at least gives fans a chance to forget by leading the team back to winning ways, he will continue to drag the controversy around with him like a great weight. It has become a staring contest, and many in Red Sox Nation hope that Beckett grows up enough to realize he has to be the first one to blink.

Andrew Martin is the founder of “The Baseball Historian” blog where he posts his thoughts about baseball on a regular basis. He can be reached at historianandrew@gmail.com. You can also reach him on Twitter at @historianandrew.