An important start

“There’s a perception out there that we were up there getting hammered and that wasn’t the case,’’ Lester said via telephone from his home in Georgia. “Was it a bad habit? Yes. I should have been on the bench more than I was. But we just played bad baseball as a team in September. We stunk. To be honest, we were doing the same things all season when we had the best record in baseball.’’

Lester said the drinking was confined to starting pitchers who weren’t in the game that day.

“It was a ninth-inning rally beer,’’ he said. “We probably ordered chicken from Popeye’s like once a month. That happened. But that’s not the reason we lost.

“It was the wrong thing to do. But most of the times it was one beer, a beer. It was like having a Coke in terms of how it affected you mentally or physically. I know how it looks to people and it probably looks bad. But we weren’t up there just drinking and eating and nobody played video games. We watched the game. We cared about what happened.

“We’d go in, get a beer, and go back on the bench. The accusation that we were up there sitting around and playing video games is obscene.’’

Lester has not spoken to ex-Sox manager Terry Francona since the end of the season, communicating with him only through text messages. He said he was sorry to see Francona go, but he believes it might be for the best.

“I love Tito and he did a great job for us when he was here,’’ Lester said. “On a personal level I was more than grateful for what he did for me and my family. But there comes a time when your authority is no longer there; you kind of run your course.

“People knew how Tito was and we pushed the envelope with it. We never had rules; we never had that iron-fist mentality. If you screwed up, he called you on it. That was how it worked.

“I never saw guys purposely breaking rules or doing the wrong thing in front of him and rubbing it in his face. But this particular team probably needed more structure. Tito was the perfect guy for this team for a long time but I think he got burnt out.’’

Lester does not blame Francona for the collapse.