The Boston Globe’s Bob Hohler penned a scathing expose of the Red Sox September collapse — the one in which they lost 21 of their last 29 games and saw a nine-game lead in the wild card standings over the Rays disappear in the final minutes of the season.

It’s full of vivid and scandalous details: pitchers John Lackey, Josh Beckett and Jon Lester sitting in the clubhouse, getting fat off fried chicken and beer while their teammates played on the field; Kevin Youkilis getting surly in the midst of another injury-plagued season; manager Terry Francona losing focus because of marriage problems and painkillers.

It’s the kind of stuff that a Tribe fan, still a little sore from the 2007 ALCS, should happily lap up. But instead the article gives off the flavor of warm Coors Light — in failing to appreciate the role that randomness plays in baseball, Hohler commits a reverse hagiography as egregious as the pieces lauding Lenny Dykstra as a stock-picking savant shortly before his portfolio fell apart.

In baseball, more than any other sport, little things add up to affect the score and outcome of the game, and little things are often as much a reflection of randomness as they are of talent and preparation. A perfect pitch can scuff off the top of a bat and bloop over the second baseman’s head for a double. An absolutely murdered line drive can go right to the third baseman, starting a triple play. A slight gust of wind makes a pitch break an inch less than the pitcher wanted, and the batter hits a home run instead of a weak grounder. 

More often than not, these little things tend to even out, and teams with greater talent and preparation win out. But not always. 

For example, take a look at this series of events in a 6-3 Red Sox loss in the third-to-last game of the season. If the Red Sox prevent four runs from scoring in this game, they don’t lose on the last day of the season:

Guerrero broke a tie with Julio Franco by bouncing a single up the middle, his 2,587th career hit. The 36-year-old Guerrero then stole second base, and after a two-out walk to Mark Reynolds, Chris Davis broke his bat hitting a soft liner to right that brought home the go-ahead run.”I didn’t make pitches when I needed to,” Beckett said. “I tried to bounce a changeup to Davis there and I leave it up and he serves it to right field.”

Robert Andino followed with a deep fly to center that Jacoby Ellsbury had in his glove before crashing into the wall. Andino sprinted around the bases and made it home as the relay throw bounced past catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia.

That’s four runs on a soft, broken-bat hit and a fly ball that should have been caught. And that’s the Red Sox season.

If the Sox catch a few more breaks, and make the playoffs, then all of a sudden Hohler is writing about how Lackey, Lester and Beckett never succumbed to the pressure of expectations by drinking beer and eating fried chicken in the clubhouse. Terry Francona managed to channel his home-life frustrations into his job. Etc. 

How do we know this? Because it happened to the same Red Sox seven years ago. Check out these details from a 2004 Rick Reilly piece:

 

-Shortstop Orlando Cabrera hitting a game-winning home run in late September, being mobbed at home plate by his teammates and then revealing afterward, “The whole time, somebody was trying to pull my pants down!”

-Joyous giant David Ortiz knocking in the game-winning run in Boston’s unforgettable ALCS Game 5 victory over the Yankees, wading through maybe 100 members of the media on the way back to his locker from the shower and suddenly stopping and roaring, “Did this guy look at my nipples? Nobody look at my nipples!”

-Jesus look-alike Johnny Damon, the leadoff hitter, lying naked on the clubhouse couch five minutes before game time? “I’ve never seen a guy go from naked to first base so fast!” marvels first-year Red Sox manager Terry Francona.

“We don’t have rules here,” Damon says, “and if we do, we can’t read them.”

The difference, obviously, is that the 2004 team won (on a series of highly unlikely plays, by the way), so the actions were painted into a different kind of narrative. 

All of that makes the truest thing in the Hohler piece this quote from Francona: 

“You never heard any of these complaints when we were going 80-41 [from April 15 to Aug. 27] because there was nothing there,’’ Francona said. “But we absolutely stunk in the last month, so now we have to deal with a lot of this stuff because expectations were so high.’’