Red Sox forced Josh Beckett to fake an injury (then he played golf)

Once upon a time, Josh Beckett played a round of golf and pissed a bunch of people off. If you don’t remember the timeline, it goes something like this:

April 2012: Josh Beckett is mediocre

May 2nd, 2012: Josh Beckett is scratched from a start with a sore lat

May 3rd, 2012: Josh beckett goes golfing

May 10th, 2012: Josh Beckett returns to the rotation and allows seven runs in a hurry.

Those are some bad optics! But now, four years later, Beckett has shed some light on why, exactly, he showed up on the golf course despite his injury. It turns out he didn’t have one! In an interview with Toucher and Rich, Beckett says the Red Sox had him make up an injury in order to give them an opportunity to activate Aaron Cook and keep him from opting out.

Just to get this out of the way: messing with your would-be ace to hold onto a bit-part player like Aaron Cook is just so Red Sox, particularly in the Epstein-Cherington era.

As Beckett points out, it’s also not completely kosher. But, let’s be honest...it’s also standard operating procedure both in Boston and elsewhere. It’s so standard that we have a name for it—”phantom DL”—that Beckett himself uses.

Still, it’s an unusual little bow tie for one of those old Red Sox stories that I can’t imagine anyone expected to find four years later.