Red Sox beat up college kids, take lunch money

The annual exhibition game vs. Boston College is a lot like the first week of NCAA football when all the good teams pair themselves up with terrible teams and beat them up just to build up some hype and inflate their BCS numbers.

The danger is that every now and then you lose to Appalachian State, and your team is so devastated that it never recovers.

How much would it have affected the Red Sox had they lost? Sean Casey, The Nicest Man on Earth, would have speared a kid after snapping his bat in half and throwing it like a javelin into the Boston College celebration pile.

I would have walked away from the TV shaking my head, unable to speak, likening the loss to Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. It would be an overstatement, sure, but like a game 7, this is a game you’re not supposed to lose.

So it’s not that I wanted the Red Sox to lose. It’s just that I didn’t feel especially good about myself when I was rooting for a team that was pummeling 18-year-olds to a tune of 24-0.

Couldn’t they string a couple of hits together and get at least one run across the plate? Can we give them a 5 run handicap? I wouldn’t feel so dirty right now if that had happened.

Pulling for the Red Sox in this game when they were up by 12 was like pulling for Mr. Burns’ hired team of Major League All-Stars to win the championship softball game vs. a group of nobodies (Cut your sideburns, Mattingly).

It was like pulling for Godzilla in Bambi vs. Godzilla.

It was like rooting for the team of convicts that included Jerry Rice, Herschel Walker and Jim Kelly when they beat the snot out of the University of North Texas in Necessary Roughness.

It was like watching Fisk’s shot and hoping the ball would go foul.

What do the Red Sox get out of this? What’s the point of this tradition, beyond the cool factor for the college kids?

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