Let’s talk turkey. And not the warmed up left over delicious turkey from Thanksgiving. I mean the mealy, cheap, particle board turkey loaf you get in vacuum packs at the super market. This is NOT a good time to be a Red Sox fan.

Since the All-Star Break, I’ve watched my team slowly begin to implode in on itself. One piece followed by the next largest piece. We’ve seen the rotation we were so excited about during the first half come apart at the seams like a dinger cracked by a juiced up Ortiz.  And it all started with Dice:

• Over the last two seasons, we’ve come to believe in Dice-K. He’s not awesome, or dominating, but he won a solid number of games. This season was a complete joke. The $8m arm couldn’t get past the 5th inning, and even then, we believed he could turn it around. Then he comes out and announces the Red Sox training program is the problem, not him, and that the “Japanese shoulder” requires a different training regimen. Right. How you doing with your social skills down in Florida, Dice?

• Smoltz is a disaster. We picked him up hoping he’d be an improved version of last year’s Bartolo Colon: be a solid stand-in starter when we need you. Nothing crazy, just eat up some innings and give the Sox a chance to groom their young pitchers. Here’s what we got: 2-5 with a 8.33 ERA. You were the best of the best in your day, Smoltz. But that day is done. Happy trails. Redsox.com reports that Smoltz is designated for assignment.

• Suddenly, everyone on the offense looks like JD Drew: flat and uninspired. I want to see Pedroia talking smack to the catcher behind him. I want to see Youkilis take a bat to the Gatorade can after a bad at bat. I want to see ‘Tek shove his glove into A-Douche’s face again. I want to see some kind of passion, as opposed to this listless and emaciated Drew-style of play. But maybe it’s all cumulative, especially after:

• The Ortiz Debacle. The announcement that David Ortiz tested positive for a banned substance in 2003 is like being sucker punched in the ball bag. You can’t rationalize it with “Well, he was cheating and so was everyone else.” You can’t make excuses for him because of what a great guy you think he is. You can’t look at the 2004 World Series win the same again. Is it tainted? Absolutely. It’s brutal… especially since he opened his mouth about banning players caught doping. Great advice, Papi. I have no idea what happens to him at the end of the season, but the simple fact is we backed a cheater and a liar. That’s a huge betrayal, and unless the clouds open up at his next press conference, he (and every other doper) should be banned for at least a year.

• The surging Yankees are playing insane baseball since the Break. They went from 4+ games behind us to being up 3 1/2 as of this article. We dropped two to the Rays, and a friend of mine bet me the Sox would be in 3rd by the end of the season.

No way. I think the race for the AL East pennant will come all the way down to the wire and the Yanks or the Sox will be the AL Wild Card. And here’s the reason: Wakefield.

Crazy, right?

But this season, as Wake goes, so the Sox go. We were in this same mess at the beginning of the season, until Wakefield pitched out of his mind that night in Oakland. And then they were the Red Sox again. For whatever reason, the morale and motivation of this team seems to hang on the shoulders of a 42 year old knuckleballer.

The Red Sox Dirt Dawg and I were talking about it this week. We cannot afford the slump that we are in right now. We cannot continue to play like this and expect to be contenders for the pennant. And I think the only chance we have to turn it around is to get Wakefield back on the mound and throwing that crazy kunckleball.

What do you think?