'I Know Nothing! NOTHING!'
Sergeant Schultz, Red Sox Media Liaison, Will Answer All Questions
About Josh Beckett and Any Potential Blister Problems
A muddy response. "After the seventh inning, NESN cameras showed Josh Beckett in the dugout with pitching coach Al Nipper checking the tip of the middle finger on Beckett's pitching hand, the finger that has blistered and landed Beckett on the disabled several times.
"Beckett, to that point, had thrown only 80 pitches and allowed only one run on two hits. It wasn't until Beckett went to the dugout after the bottom of the seventh than Julian Tavarez got up to warm up in the bullpen. Tavarez came in to pitch the eighth.
"Asked if Beckett had a finger issue, Francona said, 'You know what he did, the one inning [the sixth] he got his spike stuck and he had a bunch of mud. That's when we went out and checked. It was just me being careful. We hadn't used much of the bullpen. We had a lead. I think he would have preferred to stay in. I just didn't see a reason to do that.'
"In the sixth, Francona, Nipper, and trainer Jim Rowe visited the mound to check on Beckett's body -- presumably his side, back and legs, not his finger. He pitched that inning and the seventh.
"A reporter then asked a followup to be clear, asking if Beckett had a hand issue.
'' 'He had a bunch of mud on his spikes when he was warming up [for the sixth],' Francona said, returning again to that issue instead of answering the question." -- 5.16.06, Chris Snow, Boston Globe
Tito Being Tito?
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RemDawg Calls 'Em as He Sees 'Em
“We had shot of him at least looking at his finger. He might have come out regardless. You get him out of there after 7, that's great. …They were definitely looking at his finger, maybe the start of one [blister]. They’ve taken a lot of precautions to make sure this doesn’t happen. He warms up with a band-aid on it. We report on what we see, and we saw him looking at his finger, that wasn’t cleaning dirt out of his cleats, he was looking at his finger. I hope it’s nothing.” -- 5.16.06, NESN's Jerry Remy on WEEI's Dennis and Callahan
