Overheard an infuriatingly banal comment in the dining hall the other day:

"The Sox are gonna be good once Clemens gets goin."

I grabbed the speaker's collar:

"Listen to me and listen good, you miserable whelp," I snarled. "Your beloved 'Sox' will not be good once Clemens gets goin,' Michael Jordan will never hit a curveball, you will not find love at Harvard and our lives are as mass of days pissed away like pocket change."

I apologized later. (He was a House Master, after all).

But what a naif! There ought to be speech code against such mundanities.

I, too, once believed in the green light, but than I realized--it's just a green light!

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child and I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.

I remember growing up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, playing and loving baseball while my bourgeois little buddies played "soccer."

Each lilac-scented spring, hope returned mysteriously, and I returned to Fenway Park. And each autumn, I'd watch the season expire on TV 38. I'd flip the set off and lie down. Summer was over. Baseball was gone. Winter loomed.

I'd be sad for days--I swear, I really felt like that. My mother didn't know why, but my father did. And he'd say, "Get 'em next year, pal."

And it would start all over in the spring. Hoping on Clemens and Dwight Evans and Jim Rice and Rich Gedman--Okay, not Gedman. Fall would then fall again.

And so it went.

In 1986, I moved to Atlanta out of disgust (my parents soon followed) where I discovered National League baseball and terrible, but dedicated team called the Atlanta Braves. They prized speed, pitching and defense. And they were carefully cultivating a crop in incredible pitchers in Triple-A.

By 1990, they had won the pennant and were the most exciting team in baseball. They still are.

The average age of their pitching staff is 24 years old now. The average age of eight Red Sox pitchers, on the other hand, is 34. (Frank Viola turned 34 yesterday). Still worse, the Sox boast a bunch of old players such as (former Brave) Otis Nixon, Scott Fletcher, Andre Dawson and Dave Valle.

Not a winning formula.

This year, you will see a repeat of last year--an erratic Red Sox team, perhaps with more speed but still plagued by old woes: mediocre defense and pitching and a get-rich-quick attitude at the plate.

Be not deceived by the occasional six-or eight-game win streak. That anomaly occurs because they sometimes hit well and get hot. A six-or eight-game slide will follow hard.

Time was when Clemens could stop a three-game losing streak dead in its tracks. Perhaps he still can, but he can't do it alone. A young phenom, Aaron Sele, shows great promise, but he won't be enough. (Don't even think of Paul Quantrill, Danny Darwin or Viola).

For the 76th straight year, Boston will have no World Series championship.

Have I slipped into generalities? Perhaps I have.

Am I bitter? Maybe so.

Will I be at Fenway come June?

You bet.