Did anybody notice that the Redsocks were fat?

The other day, while SuperFrankenstein and I were ridiculing Boston on multiple fronts, we agreed on one central point:

The 2011 Redsocks were a team of bloated, boobed, chubby nincompoops.

Carl Crawford looks nothing like the outfielder who once roamed Tampa. He could play Santa. His face is a weather baloon, his belly looks like it was grafted from Bobby Abreu. What happened to the guy? Is he living over a Ben and Jerrys?

Josh Beckett apparently thought himself so much of the Second Coming of Curt Schilling that he decided to eat like him.

Adrian Gonzalez (or Godzalez, as the brilliant Dirt Dogs site now calls him) grew summer teets. (He could also be called Gutzalez.) Look at him. I've seen thinner TV chefs.

And then there is Newt Lackey. Check out the jowls. The guy was always burly, in a Joba-kind of way. Now he's roly-poly, in a Colter Bean kind of way. It's possible that he's not divorcing his cancer-stricken wife - but she's divorcing him. There's never any food in the house.

Big Papi lost weight. Pedroia remains wiry. But the Redsocks looked like a team that eats a five dollar foot long between innings. Yankee fans saw this in the 1980s, when every free agent we signed larded up by 20 pounds before donning Pinstripes. But today, look at the Yankee conditioning: Granderson is a wire, Jeter has stayed thin, Mariano? Nothing there. Even Arod and Posada - sidelined with injuries or lack of play - do not look chubby. Good grief. I'm glad we never had a bench-clearing brawl against Boston. Youkilis would have eaten somebody.