If you know anything about Boston, then you know John Lackey will never be able to pitch here again. Good riddance. Have fun paying off his contract, Mr. Henry.
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15 thoughts on “Newt Gingrich. John Edwards. John Lackey.”
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At this point, I’m actually worried about him. Think regular wellness checks from friends and his employer might be in order.
@BP: I suppose. But he was alerted that this was coming and then went out and pitched one of his better games this year.
@BP: The amazing thing about elite athletes (insert your jokes about baseball players as athletes in general and John Lackey in particular here) is they share an ability to hypercompartmentalize.
Think it’s easy? Try throwing a baseball at a target the size of a wallet 60 feet 6 inches away. Now do it when 50,000 people are screaming.
I wouldn’t worry too much about Lackey for precisely this reason. I think these guys have a special ability to tune out the noise — even if it’s just in their own heads.
@Mike: Funny thing is, people (including me) have been making excuses for him all year precisely because his wife was seriously ill. Maybe he’s going to come out of this looking better than he does right now, but it’s hard to imagine.
@Dan: That he pitched well is what concerns me the most. (:>)
The problem with that hypothesis, Dan, is that is doesn’t explain why he pitched so lousy last year.
@Mike: He was much worse this year, even though, unlike last year, he was clearly in shape. But I also suspect Gammons was on to something when he reported Lackey might need Tommy John surgery.
Whose “wallet”? Warren Buffet’s? The strike zone is a combination of the space between a batter’s shoulders and around his (or her)knees. The width is supposed to be the same as the width of home plate about 17 inches. I played a little hardball as a yute, sometimes as a pitcher but closer to the plate, and I got the ball over. It’s amazing I didn’t get my head blown off…teen age boys can hit the ball hard. In later life, I took up tennis, and the most consistent part of my game was the serve which greatly resembles the movements required in pitching.
DK – We ALL have a lack of knowledge here.
SOMETIMES, couples divorce when catastrophic illness happens so the spouse can qualify for healthcare and benefits available only on an income qualified basis. It’s like seniors who consult Howie Carr’s advertisers who are consultants who protect your ‘sacred savings’ from nursing homes by getting you onto Medicaid so we can pay for it instead.
I’ve known seniors who divorced to prevent a VA COLA from putting them over the qualification limits for food stamps, so this is an upward AND downward income phenomenon.
We set up Procrustean income limits on government subsidized programs, and sometimes people chop off a spouse to qualify.
We all have a lack of knowledge, but I think an $85 million guaranteed contract could probably rule out necessity of divorce for financial reasons. If that was the case, some agent really wasn’t running the numbers. I’d say JL’s endorsement income might be taking a modest hit (the Tiger Woods scenario).
If Lackey’s ERA was below 3.00 he could’ve GIVEN her the cancer and then divorced her, and nobody would’ve cared.
If it’s above 4, he could’ve removed the tumor himself, invented a new cure for all cancers, and saved 30 orphans from a burning building…and he’d still be a bum.
If it stays above 5, the fans will take out HER cancer and shove it into HIM.
@Laurence: “The strike zone is a combination of the space between a batter’s shoulders and around his (or her)knees. The width is supposed to be the same as the width of home plate about 17 inches.”
Now find the major league umpire who calls balls and strikes using those parameters. I’ll be waiting.
@CE and others: What I haven’t seen written — and since I read the sportspages, why would I? — is that cancer plays havoc with one’s hormones. It could well be that Mrs. Lackey experienced severe personality changes in concert with her illness, and that she became impossible for Mr. Lackey to be around.
I’ve seen this firsthand. A direct report of mine had been with his wife for 10+ years when she began demonstrating certain strange behaviors. What was an easygoing person become exceedingly irritable, angry, easily frustrated and moody. My employee had papers drawn up for a divorce, then learned she had stage IV cancer. (She died within weeks.) It really went a long way toward explaining her personality change.
I’m not saying that’s what happened here. But it appears the Lackeys have been married only since 2008. Perhaps, if her sickness has affected her personality, the Lackeys didn’t have the years together to help them overcome it.
Prenup = predump. How nice.
I told you Papelbon was a bum. I said before the season on this blog that we need some guns! What. The. Heck.