OK, boys, listen up.

Tonight we’re playing a team that absolutely reeks.

They don’t have an inferiority complex. Rather, gentlemen, the reasons for their inferiority are complex.

First off, their talent pool is murkier than the waters at the bottom of a New Jersey swamp. Their skills, and I use that term loosely, are fundamentally bankrupt.

As far as they’re concerned, defense is something they only use when saddled with a rap for reckless driving or domestic assault.

Their stadium is like Wal-Mart on the fifth day of a heat wave. You can’t find any fans.

To call ’em down-and-out would be an insult to people who really are down-and-out.

With that in mind, boys, I want us to employ one strategy above all others tonight: Don’t embarrass ’em.

That’s right. Once we secure the kind of lead that encourages the crowd to take a group potty break, let’s shift into a lower gear. Save something for a rainy night. I mean, let’s be serious: You don’t want to get hurt playing these clowns.

When we get to that point in the game, just to make sure there’s no confusion, I’ll give you the sign. From that point forward, I don’t want to see anybody’s feet more than six inches off the ground when trying to snag the ball.

Just make the routine play. Get yourself on the highlight reel some other day.

Don’t hustle to the point of exhaustion. Keep that competitive fire at a slow burn. Play out the string. All that jazz. Just remember when it’s time to change the numbers in the won-lost column, they’re only gonna ask who won, not by how much.

Got it? OK, bring it up. Team chant on three.

One. Two. Three. Sportsmanship!

Is anyone else having trouble digesting breakfast after that dose of fictional locker room wisdom, a diatribe that should disqualify its speaker from any further professional coaching assignments?

Good.

After Friday night’s 25-8 trampling of the perpetually destitute Florida Marlins, Boston Red Sox manager Grady Little essentially was held accountable for not looking his team in the eye and delivering that career suicide of a speech.

It was a bizarre game marred by one ugly scene and one potentially ugly exchange.

Most importantly, Marlins pitcher Kevin Olsen is expected to be fine after taking a Todd Walker line drive off his head. Thanks to that good news, the pitcher’s plight becomes secondary to a ridiculous but utterly predictable late-inning display by the Marlins.

Presumably rankled after watching David Ortiz admire his fourth-inning home run for a millisecond too long and seeing the Red Sox tag up and score on three sacrifice flies with a double-digit lead, Marlins reliever Blaine Neal served up what has become a silent sports cliché. Neal plunked Ortiz on the knee with a fastball.

Next inning, Boston’s Hector Almonte invoked baseball’s long-standing law of divine justice, throwing a pitch about a foot behind the back of Andy Fox. Almonte was tossed, benches emptied, and there was a brief flirtation with the possibility of a brawl until the Marlins experienced a humbling moment of clarity.

Wait a minute. This is stupid. We’re losing by 19 stinking runs.

Of course, clarity wore off after the fish returned to their air-conditioned tank. Manager Jack McKeon and a few of his players spouted off about how the Red Sox violated Section C, Paragraphs 23b and 31g in Baseball’s Double-Secret Code of Etiquette.

To which I say, Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

The reaction is ridiculous. Take your beating like men, go back to the hotel, drown your sorrows over a steak dinner and recognize that you have two more opportunities to exact revenge in a three-game series.

This is Major League Baseball, pal, not the Elliot Avenue Minors. No offense to you 9-and-10-year-olds, but it’s at least understandable if there are some written or unwritten mercy rules in your league.

If big leaguers don’t like the way the scoreboard reads, it’s their job to change it, not the duty of the stronger team’s skipper.

Pardon me for hoping we were past this two summers ago after the Seattle Mariners blew a 14-2 lead in an epic Sunday night game. That should have proved that no game is out of reach at this level.

Guess not. This past April, none other than the most overrated manager in baseball history, the Cardinals’ Tony LaRussa, verbally lambasted Colorado’s Preston Wilson for committing a supposed baseball felony by stealing a base with his team on top by five runs in the bottom of the seventh.

Anyone else think it’s conceivable that a team could score six unanswered runs before accumulating six outs at mile-high Coors Field?

Not saying the mediocre Marlins were going to unload the big two-oh in the top of the ninth. Like it or not, though, this is professional baseball.

That first word, like it or not, implies that money is a motivating factor. Down the road, when arbitration and free agency are real issues for one of these players, perhaps 90 RBIs will command more respect than 89.

Or think of it this way: Would you like to explain to Jason Varitek why you didn’t tag up on his fly ball?

Years later, we still laugh at Yogi Berra’s assertion that it ain’t over until it’s over.

Sore losers’ failure to grasp that timeless truth is no laughing matter.

Kalle Oakes is sports editor. He can be reached by e-mail at .

Copy the Story Link