We shouldn’t be surprised by Theo Epstein’s sudden resignation from the Boston Red Sox on Monday. Once he and Red Sox president/CEO Larry Lucchino started airing out their dirty laundry in the Boston media over the past week, it was evident that this was not going to end well.

As the fallout continues today, Red Sox fans are choosing up sides, with most of them enlisting in the Epstein camp. They’re angry and they’re blaming Lucchino.

That’s not where the blame belongs.

It’s understandable why the knee-jerk reaction of most fans is to side with Epstein. Theo is one of us, a New Englander, a life-long Red Sox fan who, like many of us, dreamed of one day becoming the Red Sox general manager and constructing the team that won the first world championship since 1918.

When they won it, he acted like the rest of us would have acted in his position. He sprayed champagne at the players and they at him. He brought a tear to our eye when he dedicated the championship to Johnny Pesky and Bill Buckner and all of the other aggrieved players in Boston’s history.

About the only thing Lucchino has done to make Red Sox fans stand up and cheer is to dub the New York Yankees “The Evil Empire.” But Lucchino is what he is – a businessman. He wasn’t hired by Henry and Tom Werner to be a fan, or a general manager, or to mentor a general manager. He was brought in to help broker a rather suspicious deal with his good friend, Bud Selig, to acquire Henry and Werner the Boston Red Sox, and then once they did, make them as much money as possible. And by turning Fenway Park into a theme park and turning the Boston Red Sox into the preeminent brand name in New England, Lucchino is succeeding.

Lucchino can do no wrong in ownership’s eyes, and Epstein had to know this. As long as he’s their CEO, Henry and Werner will back him.

Not that Lucchino wouldn’t have won the power struggle without more than ownership’s tacit support. He’s been around, and then some. He eats guys like Theo for breakfast, and really couldn’t care less about the aftermath. The PR hit the Red Sox are about to take? Lucky won’t mind, as long as they keep selling out the ballpark, which you know they will.

Epstein had to know all of this. He’s been learning at Lucchino’s knee since he was a student at Yale. He’s seen Lucky operate in Baltimore, San Diego and Boston. He’s watched him make deals with clueless commissioners, greedy owners, hack politicians, soulless agents, unscrupulous businessmen and steroid-geeked ballplayers. He’s outlasted just about all of them. Why would Theo think he’d be treated any differently?

Look, we’re talking about a guy who turns down an offer worth five times what he had been making and walks away from his dream job literally hours after his assistant GM takes a job with the Arizona Diamondbacks and hours before his original contract runs out. Either Epstein is really dumb, which we’ve established he’s not, or has a little too high of an opinion of himself.

And who can blame him? He got his dream job at 28, before he’d ever spent a day scouting the Frontier League or beating the bushes for prospects in San Pedro de Marcoris, like a lot of his peers did before they got their jobs. A couple of years into the job, he’s on top of the world, the boy genius, the toast of New England.

Or maybe Theo just wanted to leave. Maybe he knew ownership would never give him billing equal to or over Lucchino, and if he got out now, his legacy would be the brilliant moves he made in 2004 (signing Schilling, trading Nomar) and not the questionable moves he made this year (Renteria, Clement, Payton, the revolving door of set-up men and closers in the bullpen). And maybe he foresaw that taking on Lucchino, and making the power struggle public, would preserve his Golden Boy image.

Quite clearly, Theo decided he’d had enough. Whether it was enough of Lucchino, enough of the spotlight, enough of the long hours or having to deal with the media doesn’t really matter.

The bottom line is, he left on his own. And cursing at ownership or their right-hand man isn’t going to bring him back.

Randy Whitehouse is a staff writer. He can reached at [email protected]