Well, at least it’ll be over early.

Major League Baseball, in its redoubled efforts to ensure that New York and Los Angeles media markets are riveted to its postseason, has scheduled Game 3 of the American League Division Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim by way of San Mateo Presented by Home Depot for 12:07 p.m.

Yes, Eastern.

Makes perfect sense, after Games 1 and 2 ended during Craig Ferguson’s monologue. With almost as many people watching.

I suppose Bud Selig would adjust his handsome hairpiece, step up to the mic and say that the perceived advantage goes to the home team in this allegedly-made-for-TV hootenanny. C’mon, we all know the human body is never more ready for a potential deciding game than when its biological clock is set for 9 a.m. Sunday morning.

Whatever. And I do mean whatever, because this game could be played at 2:30 a.m. between two dunes in United Arab Emirates and it wouldn’t reverse the overriding facts.

It’s over.

This particular Sox team wasn’t “built for the postseason.” It was built for the 2010 Hot Stove Season. It was constructed to wave a white flag, not a pennant. It was sewn together for the express purpose of finishing second in the American League East and stealing a playoff share.

In the immortal words of our 43rd president, mission accomplished.

We all pasted on our “What? Me worry?” smiles and talked six months worth of smack to those, um, lifelong Yankees fans in our office. You know, the ones who don’t happen to remember that current pitching coach Dave Eiland weaved a career record of 5-82 when the Bombahs finished in the cellar more consistently than the Kansas City Royals in the early 1990s.

Boston sports bravado customarily is laughable, and this year’s rite of spring was no different. Fact is, this year’s cause was lost the moment Carsten Charles Sabathia and Mark Teixiera etched their vowel-laden names on Steinbrenner family parchment.

Forget A.J. Burnett. The Yankees could have inked R.A. Dickey as their No. 2 starter at that point. The season was over.

Oh, we all kept a courageous face when the Pinstripers couldn’t seem to elude their own shadow in April. We clung to the ill-conceived hope that all the free agent wampum in the world couldn’t buy chemistry.

Chemistry only matters if you’re a high school teacher praying that the kids don’t blow up the school. It’s vastly overrated in professional sports, and nowhere is it more of a non-factor than baseball.

I listened to Dave Campbell or Jeff Brantley or Pat Rapp or some anonymous ESPN Radio analyst opine after Alex Rodriguez’s game-saving, two-run blast in the bottom of the ninth inning Friday against the Twins that Mr. June “became more human” to his teammates this season.

That’s because his team didn’t stink out loud. Amazing what mutual tolerance grown men can discover when they’re winning, isn’t it?

Don’t let the Yankees’ back-to-back world titles in 1977 and ’78 lead you to believe that Reggie Jackson’s teammates ever thought he was anything but a self-absorbed jerk.

No matter how Republican, Christian or Red Sox-centric you are, Curt Schilling has ticked you off with his rhetoric and grandstanding at least once. Don’t think for a second that his 2004 teammates pronounced his crap odor-free.

Heck, the San Francisco Giants even made it to Game 7 of the World Series at the height of Barry Bonds’ alleged infatuation with needles and self.

Those teams still won because performance is infinitely more important in baseball than personality.

Great pitching and timely hitting overcome a multitude of sins. Through two games in SoCal, the Sox exhibited neither. John Lackey and Jered Weaver outdueled Jon Lester and Josh Beckett. The likes of Maicer Izturis and Erick Aybar sprayed the ball all around God’s greenery while David “OR-teez” (nobody makes me more homesick for RemDawg than Buck Martinez) couldn’t hit a beach ball with a two-by-four.

And now we have Clay Buchholz matched up with noted Sox-killer Scott Kazmir at a Patriots’ Day start time.

Thanks for coming. Drive home safely. Or stick around and watch Bill Belichick’s chemistry experiment at 4 o’clock.

Not sure I like how that one’s going, either.

– Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is koakes@sunjournal.com.

Copy the Story Link