Say, waiter? Can we do something about this glass? It’s half empty.

Oh, I know, here in Red Sox Nation (does NESN have a trademark on that insipid moniker yet, even though theirs is at least the seventh franchise to use it?) we’ve earned the right to exercise blind faith for the next 86 years.

You say it’s time to christen the Olde Towne Team contenders, pledge allegiance to Johnny Damon’s hair and believe, believe, believe.

Let’s slow down a little bit, shall we, and take inventory of what’s real:

Boston just dumped three of four games to the hottest team in the American League (surprise: The Yankees), then coughed up another to the Bad News Devil Rays to fall out of first place. Another loss coupled with a Baltimore win and the Sox will experience the joy of late-season mediocrity in third.

The starting rotation presently is headlined by an enigmatic National League refugee with a bad goatee, a 41-year-old time bomb, a perpetually unpredictable, wannabe rock star and the old, reliable guy whose best pitch couldn’t break a camera as efficiently as Kenny Rogers’ bare hands.

Curt Schilling still looks 38 going on 66.

Manny Ramirez has turned into Reggie Jackson, a feast-or-famine hacker without the propensity for fall fireworks.

To say the infield lacks pop is to say that Howard Stern has trouble with tact. It took the group something like three weeks to belt its collective first home run of the season in April. Have they hit one since?

The answer to Hollywood Kevin Millar’s lack of productivity was John Olerud, whose chief reason for staying in the big leagues appears to be a Rickey Hendersonian wish to collect a paycheck from all 30 teams.

Alex Cora was the first and hopefully temporary answer to Mark Bellhorn’s fly swatting. Rumored to be next in line at second base is Tony Graffanino. Yes, he is a legitimate, Major League middle infielder and no, he was not the lead male character in “Saturday Night Fever.” But don’t worry, that would have tricked everyone but the most ardent fantasy geeks.

Makes me shudder to think who might be the answer for the platoon of Bill Mueller and Kevin Youkilis at third. Butch Hobson? Scott Brosius?

We won’t even talk about the bullpen, because this is a family newspaper. Let’s forego the vernacular and just say they reek to high heaven, OK?

As evidenced by the fans’ generous selection of four starters to the AL All-Star Team, the Red Sox have never more beloved. As evidenced by everything they’ve accomplished on TV lately this side of “Queer Eye For the Straight Guy,” they have never been more overrated or vulnerable.

No doubt the half-full gang is loading its pistol with a fistful of statistics. I know. The Sox are nine games closer to first place than they were at this stage last season. They didn’t find the fast lane last year until three weeks after the July 31 trade deadline, when everybody had time to recover from the departure of Almighty Nomar.

Lest we forget, that ascent to glory included Orlando Cabrera, Dave Roberts and Doug Mientkiewicz, all of whom shuffled out of town more quickly than the construction workers on an extreme home makeover show.

So tell me, who is out there this season, besides the immortal Tony G? And who’s left to dangle as trade bait other than Youkilis, who nobody other than Moneyball guru Billy Beane acknowledges as anything more than a Quadruple-A player?

Even the embarrassingly rich Yankees are handcuffed into shopping at baseball’s thrift store these days, scraping up enough change to purchase ancient castoff Al Leiter. You know, that guy the Sox had looking like Sandy Koufax on Sunday evening.

Last year’s merry band of idiots had the bench-clearing brawl with the Pinstripers to galvanize themselves. This season’s anger seems only self-directed, from Millar’s apparent play-me-or-trade-me posturing to the constant sniping at manager Terry Francona.

Call me crazy, but this year’s highlight film has the look of a horror flick more than a fairy tale.

True, the fans in at least two-dozen big league cities would trade places with us in a heartbeat. But they don’t have the Super Bowl champions reporting to camp, either. And so it is with zero confidence that I announce my diet from this fat, dumb and happy team until next February.

Check, please.

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