Joshin' Around

Josh Beckett Talks About Coming to Boston,
His Shoulder, and Those Pesky Blisters

“I’m excited about the trade. I think it could be a good thing for me. I think you get several chapters in your life, and certainly high school’s one of them. It’s going to be a nice change for me just opening a new chapter up in my life."

"“Every time we think we got it figured out (blister problem), another one pops up. Maybe just getting out of heat and getting out of that humidity maybe that might help a little bit… We’ve tried a lot of stuff, the one that I’ve found that’s been the most productive is some stuff that’s called Stan's Blister Ointment in between starts and keeping it shaved down with a callous shaver. That’s been the most helpful thing. What was happening earlier in my career is that I wasn’t developing a callous. Whenever I would get a callous, I would let the callous get so big that a blister would develop underneath the callous, and then we’d have to cut the whole callous off and start over again. Whenever you start all over again with unhealthy skin, it’s almost like starting at a negative number instead of starting back at zero."

"I would have done the same thing (due diligence before the trade). If you’re invest this kind of money that they’re investing and getting rid of players that they were counting on, I would do all the due diligence that I could. I definitely would. Did I foresee that? No but I didn’t foresee a trade even. It was kind of a deal where I like to go see Doc (Dr. James Andrew)] at the end of every season just to see where I’m at. So it was more of a checkup for me. I had some shoulder stiffness, I had several doctors look at me ‘eh you’re fine.’ I’ve got great strength in all my muscles. It was just kind of tired." -- 11.26, Red Sox pitcher Josh Beckett