Admittedly, it was the team’s two best relievers who surrendered the runs that first forced the extra frame, then ultimately lost the game in that 10th inning. And there’s no doubt that Terry Francona will – and darn well should – continue to trustfully put the ball in the hands of both Daniel Bard and Jonathan Papelbon with the game on the line.

But, still, it’s hard for a Red Sox fan not to come away from Wednesday’s 3-1 loss at least a little bit concerned about the depth of the Boston bullpen.

Once again, the back end will be fine – but it says something about the rest of the relief corps that Bard was asked to pitch at least a full inning for the third time in three games, and that Papelbon was pressed into coming back for the 10th after navigating cleanly through the ninth. Particularly with Hideki Okajima unavailable after being so worn down he walked home the winning run on Tuesday, the rest of the ‘pen left Francona with no place else to reliably turn.

And thrust Theo Epstein’s first in-season priority into focus after just three games.

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After Sunday night’s season opener, Marco Scutaro said that even when coming to Fenway Park as a visitor he found it kind of cool when a crowd of almost 40,000 would join up in unison, get on their feet, and gleefully sing “Sweet Caroline.”

Funny, because he probably wouldn’t have found it nearly so amusing to hear what the Faithful were saying in the middle of the eighth inning last night.

With the song queued up just a few moments earlier, Scutaro had a chance to let the fans begin their sing-along with a big ol’ deep breath – but instead the brand new shortstop got his first glimpse of Boston when the good times don’t seem so good. With runners on first and second and two outs in a tie game, Scutaro bounced his throw to first after scooping Derek Jeter’s ground ball, and so the inning continued thanks to his error. Nick Johnson earned a bases-loaded walk from Hideki Okajima as the next batter, and with that the Sox fell behind by a run. They never recovered, either, getting shut down by Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera to close out a 6-4 loss.

After his glovework had been lauded all winter, and people had compared his defense to the popular Alex Gonzalez, Scutaro betrayed that billing by playing the goat in just the second game of what could be a three-year contract, and costing his club a winnable game against their archrival. Given the hypersensitivity of Red Sox fans when it comes to everything Yankee-related, and the fact that everything gets blown way out of proportion this early in the marathon, Scutaro – along with mothers whose kids aren’t yet old enough to see R-rated movies – is probably fortunate he didn’t hear what the paying customers were muttering from their seats.

It likely involved a few references to his mother, and probably prompted people to rhetorically wonder what all the fuss was about the pitching and defense that seemed to permeate every piece of pre-season speculation.

But let’s not give up on this guy quite so quickly.

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While he still wore the “C” on his uniform, he wasn’t wearing the bags of ice on his knees, his shoulders, his thighs like he has after most every game of the last decade. Instead, Jason Varitek simply returned to his locker after showering, and peacefully put on his clothes. The packs of reporters that would’ve usually come to ask him about the excitement of opening day, or quizzed him about Josh Beckett’s wayward curveball, instead went elsewhere for their answers.

It was a postgame scene encapsulating what had been crystallized on the Fenway lawn in the hours prior, and building long before that. Varitek is still the captain of the Red Sox. David Ortiz, Tim Wakefield and Mike Lowell (at least for now) still have stalls in the clubhouse.

But this team belongs to Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis.

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FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Before yesterday's wild-card playoff game, the New England Patriots urged their fans to get seated at Gillette Stadium by 10 minutes before kickoff.

They didn't say why, or share details; they just said something big was going to happen early in the afternoon.

Little did they realize that surprise would come courtesy of the Baltimore Ravens.

Ray Rice shocked the 68,756 people in the seats by going 83 yards on the first snap from scrimmage, Le'Ron McClain joined him in the end zone less than four minutes later, and the Ravens piled on 24 points in the stunning first quarter of a 33-14 win that simultaneously eliminated the Patriots from the NFL postseason and smacked any semblance of mystique clear off New England's collective face.

"It's very disappointing because we played this game like it wasn't a playoff game. It

just felt like we was out there just to be out there," said Patriots nose tackle Vince Wilfork. "We talked all week about how we needed to step our game up - and we didn't. We didn't, and it showed."

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With an act of brazen insubordination, followed by a show of intense solidarity, football season came to an end for California's Woodside High School.

It wasn't supposed to end. Not for another few weeks. But after the team's fifth straight loss, Head Coach Packy Moss reportedly returned to the dressing room and heard his players pounding on their lockers in rhythm with the chant, "(Bleep) Packy." When none of them would give her the names of those leading the mutiny, the school's principal canceled the rest of the 2003 campaign.

Moss resigned before 2004, leaving Woodside with some motivated athletes in his wake. They wanted to prove they were better, both as players and as people, than the perception of them after three straight losing seasons and the ugly chanting incident - so they used it as fuel. They focused on their job. They fought for their reputation. And they followed the lead of their quarterback.

His name was Julian Edelman.

"He was a leader," said Steve Nicolopulos, who took over for Moss as Woodside's coach. "He was one of the main characters. Kids looked up to him; he set the tone by example.

"He knew how to take care of business - and he took care of business."

A year after its season was truncated by turmoil, Edelman's three-touchdown title game helped Woodside cap a 13-0 season with a state sectional championship. And more than five years later, Nicolopulos is confident the New England Patriots can count on his former player to take care of business again.

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Maybe he got caught up in the moment, or overcome by the atmosphere created by a Superdome crowd drunk on delirium (among other things). But while sending his viewers to a commercial break with only 5:26 left in his broadcast of Monday Night Football, and the Saints in command of the 38-17 lead that ultimately stood as the game’s final margin, ESPN’s Mike Tirico couldn’t get over what he’d just witnessed.

“This score,” he told us, “is shocking.”

Really, though, it shouldn’t have been.

Not in the least.

After all, results like the one-sided slaughter rendered that night in New Orleans are rather commonplace when a member of the NFL’s elite meets an opponent from the league’s middle-class – and that was exactly the sort of matchup that played out Monday for Tirico’s primetime television audience.

Forget the week’s worth of hype. Forget the expectations of an instant classic. Forget the idea of a showdown. By the time Drew Brees had used the second quarter to become the first quarterback ever to throw three touchdowns in the same period against a Bill Belichick-coached team, it was clear his balanced, explosive and super-athletic Saints were every bit the title contender their 11-0 record would suggest.

And just as clear that the Patriots were on a different level altogether.

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We saw the look so often, some of us in New England might’ve thought they started using it as Peyton Manning’s headshot. Cheeks scrunched. Mouth agape. Hands on the helmet. And befuddlement all over the face.

It didn’t matter if it was a midseason game at home in his dome, or a midwinter game on the frigid field in Foxborough. Marked by that quizzical look, and the mediocrity that matched it, every time the Colts’ quarterback went up against the Patriots in the early part of this decade he appeared a different guy than the one who’d routinely carve the rest of the league – and so many reached the same conclusion: Bill Belichick must’ve been in Manning’s head.

Sunday night, however, we learned that those roles have been reversed.

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Tying the bow on baseball season with a World Series observation for every game it took for the Yanks to give the Phillies the downtime necessary to discover the lotta, lotta culture their city has to offer ...

 

1)  Overcome by the inevitable talk of cash flow and competitive inequity, something rather significant has so far been ignored in discussions of New York's postseason dominance. It took its first hit in 2001, and the hits got harder each year thereafter, but this fall marked the return of the Yankees as an intimidating presence.

The proof is in the path to title No. 27. The Yankees went 11-4 in the playoffs, and in each series left themselves three opportunities to close things out. Never did they need more than two – though it's not as if they enjoyed a cakewalk every night. Of the 15 games, the Yankees actually trailed in 11 of them. Six were tied in the seventh inning or later. And eight of New York's 11 wins were decided by the three runs or less.

But the Yankees wound up on the right side of those results because all three of their opponents played scared in the pivotal moments. As a team New York hit just .225 against Minnesota, .279 against Los Angeles, and .247 against Philly, but all three of those clubs seemed to feel a pressure that they needed to make every play perfectly in order to compete with the high-and-mighty Yankees, and they wound up looking tight, and stiff, and trying way to hard because of it.

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Shame on me for not articulating this more clearly in the original column yesterday, but I wanted to quickly clarify a couple things — particularly for anybody who may have been redirected here by the hilarious folks at Barstool Sports. I do not mean to suggest, nor do I believe, that the Red Sox are so vastly inferior to the Yankees that the gap between the teams is hopelessly insurmountable. And I do not mean to suggest, nor do I believe, that Josh Beckett is anything but an excellent major league pitcher. (If I didn't, I wouldn't think he'd be so valuable in trade.) But I don't think it's debatable that the Red Sox have some work to do in order to catch up to the Yankees — or that the Sox should try to close that gap as quickly as possible. And that's where Beckett comes in. He's got one year left on his contract, so he could be gone after next year anyway, and at 29 he's probably the Sox player other teams would most covet other than Jon Lester and maybe Dustin Pedroia. In other words, I think Theo could potentially turn his No. 2 starter (sorry, the 14th best ERA in the 14-team AL does not automatically make you an ace) into a solution at shortstop, at clean-up hitter, at the back of the rotation — or maybe all three at once.

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As the Yankees close in on their 27th title, it’s become clear they are the best team in baseball. They have a genuine ace at the head of an effective starting staff, a sturdy bullpen anchored by an untouchable closer, and a relentless lineup that never leaves them hopeless.

Along the course to their rival's 3-2 World Series lead it’s also become clear that the Red Sox have some work to do in order to narrow the gap between themselves and New York’s gold standard. They must add a slugger to the middle of the order. They must add reliability to a rotation that this September counted on Paul Byrd in a pennant race. They must add to a relief corps that became unsteady as summer turned to fall.

And they can make all those additions with one simple – if foundation-shaking – subtraction.

By trading Josh Beckett.

It isn’t something the Sox need to do. In fact, it isn’t something they should do if not presented with the proper, hole-plugging package. But in baseball’s realm of player evaluation there are perceptions, and there are realities – and Boston could be in position to capitalize on the fact that when it comes to Beckett those tend to be two different things.

The perception of Beckett is that he’s a bona fide ace. A guy who has earned a mention among the game’s elite, and is in the midst of his prime. A guy who grabs the ball and gets it done, whether it takes guts or guile or his own good stuff.  A guy who delivers every five days through the summer, then can single-handedly wins playoff series in the fall. And, at times, he has been all that.

But, by and large, the reality has been something else altogether.

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