John Lackey has decided to follow up divorcing his wife for having a double mastectomy with an unexpected act of chairty; he’ll be improving Boston Red Sox rotation by having Tommy John surgery and sitting at home for the entirety of 2012.

From Joe McDonald at ESPN Boston:

Lackey recently received an MRI and was examined by Dr. Lewis Yocum in Los Angeles, and it was decided the pitcher would undergo the procedure. A date for the surgery has not been set.

“John Lackey pitched through circumstances this year that I don’t think any of us can fully understand, and he got beat up for it a little bit,” Cherington said. “This guy was dealing with stuff both on the field and off the field that were very difficult, and he showed tremendous toughness pitching through that.”

It’s true. Lackey worked through a year of his tough $82.5 million contract to post a scrappy 6.84 ERA with a gutsy 6-8 record. Fun fact: he’s the third Sox pitcher to have Tommy John surgery this year, following in the footsteps of former sort-of-ace Daisuke Matsuzaka and lefty reliever/upscale housing complex Rich Hill.

The news of Lackey’s departure comes as a blow to Yankees fans, but hopefully he’ll return strong in 2013 with his 35% fastball intact.

This is one of those stories where there has to be more to it, because honestly, Jesus: Boston Red Sox pitcher John Lackey has filed for divorce from his wife, Krista.

“What’s so bad about that?”, you might ask, assuming it has something to do with her being pretty and him looking like an older, fatter, grosser version of Xander from “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. What’s so bad about that is Krista is currently in the middle of a battle with breast cancer. She underwent a double mastectomy back in March and was in chemo as recently as June. Keeping all of that in mind, please read John’s reason for divorce, courtesy of TMZ:

Lackey filed on August 30, according to court docs in Texas, claiming “the marriage has become insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities.” Krista and John got married in November, 2008.

The divorce petition says John and Krista had a prenup. It also says Lackey has “separate property” he wants to keep for himself.

See what I mean about hoping there’s more to it? We don’t know the specifics of what went down between the two and chemo is rough; it is literally poison and can change the way your brain works. Everything you read about this is going to be designed from the headline down to make Lackey look like a piece of sh*t, and with good reason — if it turns out his “conflict of personality” was Krista being a dying wife and John not wanting to deal with it, yeah, he should get tossed in that John Edwards and Newt Gingrich pile of irreparable douchebags who never deserved a wife in the first place. If it turns out that these are three dimensional people going through the same problems as everyone else … well, Jesus, there’s really no way out, is there?

Here’s to hoping breast cancer had nothing to do with it, and Krista divorced him because he couldn’t keep his ERA under six.

Last week, we were full of oohs and ahs after a Cirque du Soleil performer delivered one of the most ridiculously fantastic first pitches in baseball history, said the guy using hyperbole. But the fine people at San Diego’s PETCO Park can go back to the drawing board because all of the front flips and barrel rolls in the world can’t top yesterday’s first pitch at Fenway Park.

The family of U.S. Navy Petty Officer Bridget Lydon gathered on the pitcher’s mound prior to yesterday’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays for a special video greeting from Lydon. But as they watched the video, Lydon stepped out from behind a giant American flag and greeted her family in person for the first time since she was deployed on the USS Ronald Reagan in 2009. Lydon returned on the Reagan recently after a quick stop in Japan to aid tsunami and earthquake victims, but her family had no clue she was homeward bound. Me and my tear ducts agree that this was a pretty damn good surprise. And while Lydon’s pitch was way off target, I’m betting that most Red Sox fans would have rather left her in, instead of letting John Lackey take the mound.

After the jump, I’ve got video of Lydon talking about the opportunity, but it’s obviously not nearly as good as the actual video of her introduction and family’s reaction, which you can view at MLB.com, since Bud Selig’s gestapo won’t let us no good bloggers have embedding privileges. Seriously, though, every team should do this every game. For the next 200,000 or so games. That would be pretty nice.

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