Jon Lester opens up on beer/chicken-gate, Terry Francona

Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe spoke with Jon Lester, who is -- as far as I can tell -- the first of the Red Sox Fried Chicken Posse to answer the allegations about all of that beer and chicken and those video games and stuff. Lester was contrite to some degree, but added a healthy dose of reality too:

“There’s a perception out there that we were up there getting hammered and that wasn’t the case. Was it a bad habit? Yes. I should have been on the bench more than I was. But we just played bad baseball as a team in September. We stunk. To be honest, we were doing the same things all season when we had the best record in baseball.”

And he said that the chicken thing was overblown. Said they did it once a month. It was Popeye’s, if you care.

On a more important note, Lester had a lot of interesting things to say about Terry Francona leaving. Which, while respectful and charitable to Francona, suggest that, yeah, he lost control of the clubhouse and it was his time to go. Click through to read his quotes on that. Pete Abe did a great job tracking Lester down and deserves the clicks.