Beer And Fried Chicken

NYT on the blame game in Boston after the Red Sox collapse:

After The Boston Globe published an article last week that said starting pitchers drank beer and ate fried chicken in the clubhouse during games, the identified players — Jon Lester, John Lackey and Josh Beckett — remained silent. In Boston, the main reaction to the article was disgust over the antics of the players and revulsion that the newspaper suggested Manager Terry Francona might have been distracted by marital issues and the use of painkillers. Francona emerged — and has remained — a sympathetic figure. He may be the only one.
The team owner John Henry, who normally corresponds by e-mail and Twitter, became so upset Friday while listening to the Sports Hub, another talk-radio station in the city, that he drove to the station and demanded to be heard, live, on the air. The delighted hosts complied and Henry said, among other things, that the hosts were “misleading the public” and, by the way, that he opposed the now-belittled $142 million deal for Carl Crawford.
Then Lester decided to make the news media rounds this week, admitting to enjoying an occasional “rally beer” in the clubhouse while his teammates were on the field and in the dugout. That, he concluded, was bad form. But he also suggested that the departed Francona was too soft and had lost the team.

Seriously, beer and fried chicken consumption during the game by starting pitchers on their off-day is a big deal?  There would be approximately a 0.125% chance that one of these guys would be needed during the game.  What was going to happen, Terry Francona send one in as a pinch hitter?  Give me a break, the sports media just needs something to talk about, and Beantown fans are nuts.  They've got the Stanley Cup, so maybe they ought to quiet down a little bit.