It's all riding on Beckett

NEW YORK - Josh Beckett returns to the mound tomorrow night at Fenway against the White Sox, and he's hoping there will be no more of the tingling sensation he felt in his pitching hand (ring finger and pinkie) when he was beaten by the Toronto Blue Jays Aug. 17.

"I think scary is probably a good word for it," Beckett said. "I've had some sleepless nights thinking about all kinds of stuff. You generally think the worst."

It doesn't matter if you're a librarian, a television sports reporter, or a big league pitcher - a tingling sensation in the fingers is not good. It can make you wonder about all sorts of things, some of them life-threatening. If you throw baseballs for a living, it's potentially a career-ender.

That is why the best Red Sox moment in New York this week came when Beckett threw a 58-pitch, tingle-free bullpen session under the supervision of pitching coach John Farrell Tuesday afternoon.

"It went really well," Beckett reported. "I was excited afterward."

The Nation should be doubly excited. Face it, Sox fans, you can make a lot of noise about Jason Bay over Manny, middle-relief issues, the health of Mike Lowell and J.D. Drew, the acquisition of Mark Kotsay, and NESN's ratings for that awful "Sox Appeal," but nothing matters if Beckett goes on the shelf for September and October. Beckett is the reason the Sox won the World Series last year and he is their best bet if they hope to compete against the likes of the Angels and Cubs this year.

It's been an uneven season for the staff ace. Beckett is 11-9 with a 4.34 ERA. He's been downright ordinary, somewhat like in 2006 (16-11, 5.01), when he tried to throw fastballs by every hitter and watched 36 of them sail over fences. Welcome to the American League.

Beckett bounced back nicely in 2007, winning 20 games and competing for the American League Cy Young Award. He was downright Gibsonian (4-0, 1.20) in October.

It hasn't been the same this year, and when the Blue Jays rocked him for eight earned runs in 2 1/3 innings 11 days ago at Fenway, you knew something had to be wrong.

Beckett is not big on excuses. ("I don't say anything. I just go about my business. Some days you get your [butt] whipped.") But he knew it was time to talk to his manager and his pitching coach about the tingling.

"That was the first day he mentioned having anything of any substance," said Farrell.

It was time to shut down. Time for rest and medical evaluation. The Sox announced he would skip his next start. Then they pushed him back a second time when he still had the sensation on a day he was scheduled to throw.

"It's something I've battled for a while," Beckett acknowledged.

Elbow tenderness and an awkward sleeping position may have contributed to the tingling, but no one claims to know the source of the problem. Nobody wants to talk about elbow surgery or anything like that.

"We're trying to figure out what's causing it and go from there," said Beckett. "Right now it's just day to day and I'm dealing with it. We have a great medical staff. We're trying to be cautious. We're not talking about just the end of a season, but about the end of a career. Some organizations would do anything they could to get a player back out there. I appreciate what they are doing for me here."

"We monitor him every day and do what's in his best interests," said manager Terry Francona. "We want him to pitch worry-free. This is a guy we rely on not just for Friday, but for a lot of Fridays to come."

They're hoping some of those Fridays are in October.

Tomorrow's start is kind of a big deal for Beckett and the Red Sox.

Daisuke Matsuzaka is 15-2 with a 2.98 ERA. Jon Lester, who starts this afternoon in the Sox' final game at Yankee Stadium, is 12-5 with stopper-like statistics. But if the playoffs started tomorrow, Josh Beckett would be the man getting the baseball. The Sox aren't going anywhere without him.