Okay, what I said yesterday. About us being toast if we can’t sweep the Royals? Let me backtrack a bit and adjust that statement to say that if we can’t beat the worst team in baseball tonight with Josh Beckett and his impossibly frightening beard, then we’re all done. Seriously. Pack up the trumpets and throw a sheet on the chandelier.

It sickens me to say this, seeing as how we’re taking on the team with the worst record in all of baseball, but tonight’s game is huge. That’s right. Our big money guy has got to come up big against a 39-73 club. And the creepy thing? I’m only kinda certain he can pull it off. No emphatic tubthumping here. Just a meek and meager, “Josh, please. Don’t f–k this up.”

Papi’s a big guy, folks. But he can’t carry us all by himself.

Everything must change. Tonight.