Remember how Kevin Spacey won an Oscar for American Beauty? Dude was so good in the flick, we were able to overlook such follow-up tripe as The Life of David Gale and Pay It Forward and How Could You Possibly Think I Don’t Like Girls? I Banged Helen Hunt, For Chrissakes. As I’ve mentioned several times, I’m still aglow in World Series Championship splendor. Not a day goes by that I don’t walk past my vault of Dave Roberts Franklin Mint Commemorative “Breakfast Buddy” Statues and say aloud, “Hot damn, it feels good to be a Red Sox gangsta.” Free passes abound. Everything is beautiful. I :heart: Dale Sveum.

I mean, the Sox did this last year as well, right? They spent a good deal of the early season in flatliner mode, only to spring to life when we needed them most, defying our expectations and no doubt putting countless psychiatrists across Massachusetts out of work.

So, again, I’m finding the happy in even these most dismal of circumstances. Yes, we only managed four hits, but one of them was by Edgar. And while the hitting has been ghastly of late, Bill Mueller continues to show signs of Bill Mueller Model 2003 at the plate. Also: Nobody was bitten by a wombat. There was no “special farewell appearance” by the guy who plays the brother on Everybody Loves Raymond. Tim McCarver was nowhere to be found. The “free form jazz banjo concert” featuring Shea Hillenbrand and Greg Zaun was cancelled. And the between inning entertainment, listed in the programs as “Kevin Millar and Lynn Jones try on fake beards to the musical accompaniment of Steve Perry of Journey,” never materialized. So there is some silver lining here, folks.

So we plod on into tonight’s game with the hope that our boys can turn it around and find some sort of spark before heading to the Bronx.