01:00 AM EDT on Friday, April 29, 2005

I am writing in defense of fat guys.

Hey, somebody's got to stand up for them, since they're otherwise occupied in sitting at the dinner table, chowing down. The only time fat guys stand up is to waddle back to the head of the line at the all-you-can-eat buffet. But I understand, and so am here to make sure they get their just desserts.

And, before we get into this, spare me the cheap shots about how "it takes one to know one." Fat guys can be thin-skinned, and you don't want to end up with a fat lip.

The Red Sox were in Fat City last October, when generations of championship-starved fans were euphoric over Boston's first World Series victory in 86 years. There were heroes galore in that historic triumph, but none bigger than ace pitcher Curt Schilling, who became a larger-than-life figure by winning Game Six of the ALCS in Yankee Stadium, then Game Two of the World Series in Boston against the Cardinals, with blood oozing from an ankle that had been surgically patched in a M*A*S*H-like procedure that would have made Hawkeye Pierce proud.

It was a gallant and gutsy performance by Schilling.

Now, though, when Red Sox fans talk about him, the topic of conversation is not his guts, but the gut protruding over the waistband of his doubleknits.

The big righty showed up for spring training looking as if he had attended a few too many offseason awards banquets, although the primary reason he was carrying a few extra pounds had more to do with his inability to work out extensively following reconstructive surgery on that injured right ankle.

Suddenly, the calorie count has become more important than the pitch count for Schilling and rotund left-hander David Wells now that the aging aces are sharing a table for two on the disabled list, leaving Boston's cupboard bare of top-quality starting pitchers.

Wells is listed at 248 pounds in the Red Sox' media guide and, if there was betting on that figure in Vegas, the money would be pouring in on the "over."

If Wells were in better shape, the hue and cry has gone, he might not have sprained his "plantar fascia" -- which, until this week, Wells probably thought was a kind of pasta.

Bad enough that the Sox bid adieu to Dr. Bill Morgan, whose innovative surgical talents enabled Schilling to keep pitching last October. Now, it seems, the fans want to bring in Jenny Craig.

This is strange because most fans generally love Fat Guys -- perhaps because they can identify with them.

Big John Daly overindulges in food, as well as, at various times, gambling, cigarettes, alcohol and women -- he's gotten married more often than he's won golf tournaments in recent years. But his popularity continues to outpace his ever-increasing waist line.

Seldom has an athlete been more popular than William "Refrigerator" Perry, the massive tackle who anchored the fearsome Chicago Bears defense that destroyed the Patriots, 46-10, in Super Bowl XX.

And there's plenty of precedent in baseball for fans adoring players packing a few excess pounds.

Babe Ruth's beer gut didn't keep him from becoming the game's greatest home run hitter, and its most beloved player.

And then there was Hack Wilson, a contemporary of Ruth's who was described by the late Bill Veeck as "an oddly built, stocky little barrel of a man, with clothes hangers in his shoulders and a watermelon in his gut."

In his wonderful book, Veeck, as in Wreck, the former owner of the Indians, White Sox and St. Louis Browns -- as well as Suffolk Downs race track -- describes the day he went into the Cubs' clubhouse and found Wilson, who was known to take a drink or two, "in one of those big, high, old tubs with a 50-pound cake of ice.

"Well," Veeck wrote, "what would you do if a 50-pound cake of ice jumped into your bathtub with you? You'd try to jump out, right? That was precisely what Hack was trying to do. Enthusiastically but not successfully. Every time Hack's head would bob up, (the trainer) would shove it back down under the water and the cake of ice would come bobbing up. It was a fascinating sight, watching them bob in perfect rhythm -- first Hack's head, then the ice, then Hack's head, then the ice.

"The date would be easy enough for any scholar to find. That afternoon, Hack hit three home runs. It was the same year that he hit 56."

Which set a National League record that stood for years.

Red Sox fans always have embraced super-sized superstars such as Mo Vaughn and George "Boomer" Scott. Or would have, if they could have gotten their arms around them. And would Carlton Fisk have been as well-liked if his nickname had been "Slim" rather than "Pudge?"

Ah, you say, but they were hitters.

Fine. How about Early Wynn, who won 300 games while weighing well over 200 pounds? Mickey Lolich wasn't exactly svelte when he pitched the Tigers to victory in the 1968 World Series. Did anyone ever suggest, back in the days when Fernando Valenzuela was mesmerizing batters with his bizarre delivery for the Dodgers, that he drop a few pounds? And I don't remember any outrage in Boston when roly-poly Luis Tiant was winning game after game for the Sox.

That is, of course, what's eating Boston fans at the moment -- the Sox aren't winning, and Schilling and Wells, who are being counted upon to lead the team to another title, aren't pulling their weight.

Schilling called the pitching problems the team is currently facing "an early gut-check."

He'd better believe the fans will be checking out what sort of gut he and Wells will be sporting when they finally return to the mound.

All will be forgiven, of course, if the two burly veterans round quickly into their customary form and deliver a steady diet of wins.