Mike Motley, Baseball Genius

Shoulda gone with Mickey-D's, bro.

For the past two months or so, the Boston Red Sox have been the biggest joke in Major League Baseball. Bigger than the collapse by the Atlanta Braves. Bigger than C.C. Sabbathia's gut. Bigger than Tony La Russa's Game 5 brain fart. Bigger than Ken Rosenthal's "Pee-Wee-Herman" bow ties.

However, the humor went from a stand-up act and escalated into an all out Jeffrey-Ross-endorsed comedy roast when the rumors of the starting pitchers lounging around with beer, fried chicken and video games in the dugouts during off-days started to fly. Yeah, thanks to BeerChickenXBoxGate, we've been able to have a physical target of all of our venom towards the team, a hatred that had been incubating under Boston for the past eight years.

Thanks, LOLSOX.

Now, John Lackey's ERA did resemble a quarterback's fantasy football score. Tim Wakefield did take forever to get to a statistic that won't mean much to the Hall of Fame, and "Sweet Caroline" did become the anthem for everything wrong about the Fenway experience. However, I'm not about to pin all this on Popeye's and BL Limes. Josh Beckett didn't have career lows in batting average, runs and stolen bases (Carl Crawford), and Lackey didn't strand an AL-leading 7.35 runners per game.

In fact, I'm going to suggest that beer isn't the problem; it could easily be part of the solution.

Mike Motley and his boss, Mr. Drudge

Back in the 80s, my favorite things to do on Sunday were watch sports on TV and pop out the "funnies". While my upbringing presented the blue-collar lifestyle to me, I got a lot of its humor by reading "Motley's Crew", a comic by Ben Templeton and Tom Forman. It was all about Mike Motley, a middle-America factory worker who slaved away during the week for a thankless boss, but once the weekend was here, Mike showed his love for Blotto Beer and his conversation with his bar buddies.

In May 1984, Mike Motley came up with a solution that could solve the Sox's woes instantly. In fact, it would likely get the starting pitchers to enjoy trips to National League parks and get them running the base paths. (Pardon the quality; Dad's used it for a bulletin board for years.)

Guarantee you Lackey's elbow would miraculously heal itself overnight.