Jon Lester confirmed he and fellow Red Sox starting pitchers Josh Beckett and John Lackey were drinking during games and admitted “it was the wrong thing to do,” but said it was not as bad as a Boston Globe story made it out to be.
“There’s a perception out there that we were up there getting hammered and that wasn’t the case,” Lester told The Globe from his home. “Was it a bad habit? Yes. I should have been on the bench more than I was. But we just played bad baseball as a team in September. We stunk. To be honest, we were doing the same things all season when we had the best record in baseball.”
Lester told the paper the beer was consumed only by starters who were not scheduled to pitch and it wasn’t a party atmosphere. The previous report stated that Lester, Beckett and Lackey would order fried chicken and play video games while their team was in action.
“It was a ninth-inning rally beer,” he said. “We probably ordered chicken from Popeye’s like once a month. That happened. But that’s not the reason we lost.
“Most of the times, it was one beer, a beer. It was like having a Coke in terms of how it affected you. I know how it looks to people and it probably looks bad. But we weren’t up there just drinking and eating and nobody played video games. We watched the game.”
The accusations in the story came in the aftermath of the Red Sox late-season collapse when they blew a nine-game lead to miss out on the playoffs on the season’s last day. The 7-20 September swoon cost manager Terry Francona his job and GM Theo Epstein has agreed to leave for the Cubs, a deal that will go through once Boston and Chicago agree on compensation.
“I love Tito and he did a great job for us when he was here,” Lester said of Francona, who was charged with losing control of the team amid a dependency on pain pills and being distracted by a failed marriage.
“On a personal level I was more than grateful for what he did for me and my family. But there comes a time when your authority is no longer there. You kind of run your course. People knew how Tito was and we pushed the envelope with it. We never had rules, we never had that iron-fist mentality. If you screwed up, he called you on it. That was how it worked.
“I never saw guys purposely breaking rules or doing the wrong thing in front of him and rubbing it in his face. But this particular team probably needed more structure. Tito was the perfect guy for this team for a long time but I think he got burnt out.”
Lester said he felt he had to speak for Beckett and Lackey and was frustrated the way anonymous sources started this most-recent firestorm.
“Consider us a unit when it comes to these accusations,” Lester said. “We either fall together or rise above it all together whether they like it or not. Things got magnified because we lost and sources started telling people what happened, which has me upset, because if you’re going to say something, be a man to put your name to it. But we’re not bad people and we’re not a bad group of guys.
“Are there things I regret? Sure there are. But nothing happened that had me unprepared to pitch. I don’t blame people for wanting answers because we had a hell of a team and we lost. You can’t have a team that gets paid like we get paid and loses and not expect people to want answers.”