Admit it.

What we hate about the Boston Red Sox right now is precisely what we love about baseball. All sports, really.

Mighty Casey eventually strikes out. The baseball angels, not to be confused with the Subway/Nabisco Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Presented by Sunoco and The Passion of the Christ Director’s Cut, give, and the baseball angels take away.

The pennant-hoisting pillar of today can be a Ben Gay scented monument to mediocrity tomorrow, and of course that’s the only reason any of us pay or get paid to watch this stuff.

It’s why some of us chase ambulances and why most of us soak up all the information we can stomach about filthy-rich runaway brides and nouveau-riche, hillbilly lottery winners alike. We love a good crisis. We adore juxtaposition.

And you’d better believe Our World Champion Boston Red Sox are offering us both, merely one month into what is shaping up to be an egregiously long season.

Or maybe you planned on tuning in the first Monday night in May and watching the perpetually pitiful Detroit Tigers whack Jeremi Gonzalez, Blaine Neal and Lenny DiNardo around Comerica Park.

Who?

Yes, exactly.

Possibly you interpreted Curt Schilling’s predicted return to pennant race form in “mid-April” to mean “Fourth of July.”

Either you’re psychic, or last year’s once-in-some-lifetimes championship charge didn’t chip away that protective layer of cynicism. Good job hanging in there and riding out those six months on top of the world. You’ll have a much easier time adjusting to the stale air down here than the rest of us.

I’m guessing you also anticipated that David Wells would show less-than-zero pride in his level of conditioning, down from his readings of “miniscule” and “scarcely detectable” in previous seasons.

You knew that Alan Embree would have trouble getting 7-year-old farm league hitters out.

That Mark Bellhorn would continue flailing at every pitch within a long-distance call of his wheelhouse as if he’s just been blindfolded after drinking eight cups of hyper-caffeinated, over-the-counter energy drink.

That Keith Foulke would experience difficulty spotting every pitch in his repertoire except his 86 mph fastball.

That Edgar Renteria would need time to adjust his swing to American League staff aces like Jeremy Bonderman and Rodrigo Lopez.

That the Baltimore Orioles’ would merge Brian Roberts, Melvin Mora and Miguel Tejada with the three-headed monster of mid-1990s rotisserie league cornerstones Sammy Sosa, Javy Lopez and Rafael Palmeiro and create some hybridized, second coming of Murderer’s Row.

That not-so-long-ago Human Trade Bait, Shea Hillenbrand, would reinvent himself as the consummate Moneyball player in Toronto, of all places. Seriously, couldn’t he choose Arizona, Colorado or D.C to pull that stunt? I’d almost forgotten that Toronto had a Big League franchise until I looked up and saw their name in the standings just above the one in bold type this morning.

You knew all this was coming, the same way you knew the Sox needed Pedro Martinez and Derek Lowe, and that the other, colorless Sox would have the preeminent record in the AL after 25 games.

I, on the other hand, was in the dark. Darker than the blood stains on Big Schill’s glass-encased sanitary sock; deeper than the red stones on one of those garish World Series rings you could win in a $10 charity raffle.

Out of the loop, fooled like Bellhorn waving at a meatball from Hideo Nomo. And boy, do I love it. Yeah, it’s one, big, happy hootenanny.

Somebody wake me up when the Patriots report to training camp.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].