Life is filled with nuance and compromise. Luckily, Kevin Wildes has sorted through it all for our feature, Winners and Losers.

The Boston Red Sox collapse has been well-documented. Here is a list of who won and who lost.

Winners

• Steve Bartman
• Baked Chicken
• Bill Belichick
• Grilled Chicken
• Brian Cashman
• San Diego Chicken
• Dustin Pedroia
• Chicken Parm
• Jed Lowrie’s friendship
• Chicken Francese
• The use of the phrase “getaway days” when you’re not talking about baseball
• Chicken Fricassee
• Kevin Fowler’s casting director
• The theory that body fat has effect on pitching performance, even though when you think of great pitchers, they look more Ruthian than Lincecumian.
• This weird recipe that I found when I Googled “chicken baseball”
• Biscuits. They’re getting a free pass.
• This half-baked idea: The grease from fried chicken could be used to throw a Gaylord Perry-type spitball.

Losers

• Children

My parents wouldn’t let me use steroids in Little League. Being a competitive kid, I needed an edge beyond my Mizuno batting gloves. Then I heard Wade Boggs ate chicken before every game. He was Popeye and chicken was his spinach. He was Hulk Hogan and chicken meals were his raw eggs. He was ALF and chicken was his cat. That feels like 25 years ago now. (Note: it was 25 years ago.) Modern-day children will never think that excessive chicken consumption is good for their baseball careers. Sorry kids — back to eating raw eggs and cats.

• Parties on yachts
• Dunkin’ Donuts

Out of all the junk foods the pitchers could have been eating, you’d think they’d throw the team’s sponsor a bone.

• Chicken Pox

Kevin Wildes is a Coordinating Producer for ESPN. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinwildes

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