Sleep an hour or two and go to work. Chances are, there's no employee of the day trophy waiting at the end of the shift. Heck, if you were an airline pilot or truck driver, there might even be a criminal complaint.
The sleep-deprived Red Sox tried it yesterday in their home opener and fell face first in a game that started with all the promise of a new season of baseball in New England and ended with a fresh round of questions about how many more injuries their beleaguered club can bear.
By day's end, the Sox had dropped their third straight home opener -- 10-5 to the Blue Jays before 34,337 -- and added Johnny Damon and Ramiro Mendoza to an injury roll call that already includes Nomar Garciaparra, Trot Nixon, and Byung Hyun Kim. And the dwindling number of healthy players among them wanted nothing else but pillows under their heads after their record slipped to 2-3.
"I might beat my kids to bed for the first time in awhile," Alan Embree said, with ice packs on his shoulder and elbow, and bags under his eyes.
So it was after the luckiest Sox players slept three or four hours, though most snoozed about as much as manager Terry Francona, who crashed for an hour on the couch in his clubhouse office after the team's numbing trip home from Baltimore. Due to mechancial problems with their Delta charter at Baltimore-
"An absolute nightmare," said Derek Lowe, who endured the last such incredible adventure, a 13-hour delay caused by violent thunderstorms at New York's LaGuardia Airport as the team tried to reach Toronto June 1, 1998.
"Brutal," said Tim Wakefield, who started against the Jays that day in '98. The Sox won, 9-5.
No such luck for the next generation of sleepwalkers. Playing a Toronto team that arrived in town Thursday at 7 p.m., just as the Sox began their debilitating 13-inning loss to the Orioles, Francona's club carried a 5-4 lead into the eighth inning before Mike Timlin squandered a save opportunity by surrendering three runs to the previously winless Jays.
Timlin was making his fourth appearance in five games, including the previous night's marathon. And the Sox' pen was so depleted that he had little choice but to endure Toronto's pounding as he threw 36 pitches in the inning, giving up three doubles and a single and hitting a batter.
Blame it on the workload and the sleep deprivation?
"I'm not going to throw any excuses out there," Timlin said, visibly fatigued. "I pitched bad. That was me. I didn't make quality pitches with two strikes, and that's what beat me."
