Lackey Laughs at all of Clay's Jokes

You'd never know that the season had started by reading this blog since I haven't written anything since before Opening Night. Rest assured readers that I have been keeping up with the goings on of the Red Sox and just have been too busy and overwhelmed by all of it to write about it.

I'm sure you are all up to speed on the Sox' Opening Night victory and last night's defeat due to our shortstop's error and Okie's bad inning so I won't bother going into that. If you aren't up to speed on those things I recommend you go to boston.com and read about it. And I know you are all thinking I'm going to write about Josh Beckett's contract extension but really I've got nothing to say about that beyond breathing a huge sigh of relief.

In fact, there was a Clay Buchholz quote about Lackey this morning in an article at redsox.com that caught my eye. "He makes you feel good, because he laughs at all your jokes. He's always smiling. He's just a good guy to have on the clubhouse and on the field." My first thought was that Clay often has sweetly goofy things like that to say about people but then I thought, I wonder how bad Clay's jokes are? Does he often tell jokes and people don't laugh at them? Is that why he likes that trait so much in Lackey? Does he try to tell jokes to serious Jon Lester and snarky Josh Beckett and not get the reaction he's hoping for?

Despite my vocal pre-season dislike of John Lackey, the fact that he laughs at Clay's jokes bumps him way up in my estimation. Now if he can pitch well tonight he might clinch his place among my favorites (which number close to 25).