There are two ways to look at the Red Sox’ recent tumble from the pinnacle of the major-league baseball hierarchy. Let’s hear from the opposing sides as the team returns home from its 3-6 road trip to face Cleveland this week.

Point. I suppose that it’s too much to expect the Sox to play at a .700 clip all season long, although the Seattle Mariners pretty much did it last season. Nonetheless, is it too much to ask a team to play at least .500 on every road trip, and to get even a sniff of some clutch hitting? I mean, what the heck is happening with the first-base position? Everybody who plays there can’t hit a lick. Tony Clark (.206), Brian Daubach (a slumping .251), and Jose Offerman (.225) are just not doing the job. Where’s Nick Esasky when you need him? And when are we going to get some production from Trot Nixon?

It’s late June, for goodness’s sake, and he’s still only batting .246. Meanwhile, after getting swept at home by the Diamondbacks, the Sox squeak out a series win over the Rockies, lose two out of three in Atlanta, take two of three in San Diego, and then get swept out of Los Angeles, while slugger Manny Ramirez seems to be setting up shop in Pawtucket during his extended rehabilitation stint. I mean, how does a guy making $15 million find himself going three-for-29 at the Triple-A level of minor-league ball, and zero for his last 18? How much rehabilitation does a guy need, anyway? It’s a broken finger! It should have taken four to six weeks to heal, and it’s been six weeks. Does he really need a week and a half in the minors to get back to where he was? Hell, when players return for spring training each February, they’re coming off nearly five months of inactivity. Manny was only dealing with five weeks, and he’s stinkin’ up McCoy and every other sandlot the PawSox have visited.

Anyway, that’s no excuse for the way the team has played in the last two weeks. John Burkett has forgotten how to win, Derek Lowe blows a 3-0 lead on Saturday, Rolando Arrojo gives up nine earned runs in less than three innings in a must-win situation Sunday, and now after being the talk of baseball for three months, they’re not even in first place in their own division! And the A’s and Angels are coming up fast to steal our wild-card spot, too. And look who we play next! The Indians. Do you remember when the wheels started falling off the wagon last September, it all began with a three-game road sweep at Cleveland? Then it was three straight at home to the Yankees, and, well, you know what happened the rest of the way. I feel it coming again — folding and heartbreak! Waaaaah! Mommy!

Counterpoint. Well, you sniveling little whiner, you made the point yourself initially. Did you expect them to play .700 ball throughout the season? I think that’s a bit unreasonable to expect, especially since last year’s Mariners team was only the first in 85 years to win 116 games. I also don’t remember reading in the papers about them uncorking the Dom in November. Pennants can be lost in June, but they usually can’t be won. We’re not even at the halfway point yet. In addition, look who the Red Sox have played in recent weeks. The Diamondbacks? Only the defending World Series champions. Colorado? Definitely playing better since their dismal start, and are 31-22 since changing managers. The Braves? They’re arguably the best team in the National League right now. The Padres? Not bad, and they beat the Yanks 9-1 on Friday before dropping consecutive one-run decisions over the weekend. LA? Only the hottest team in the NL right now, and currently in first place in the NL West, ahead of the D-backs. And by the way, did you notice the tenor of the Sox’ losses on this trip? Starting in Atlanta, they lost 2-1 and 4-2 decisions; a 3-2 loss in San Diego; and in LA, a 3-2 defeat, a 5-4 loss, and a 9-6 loss (after trailing 9-0 in the third, and ultimately getting the tying run into the on-deck circle in the ninth). Agonizing, yes, but until yesterday, not a blowout to be found, and those are damn good teams they were playing.

And look, Cleveland’s coming to town, but they’re five games below .500, and frankly, they stink. Their pitching cannot match up to Boston’s, at least not on paper. Then who’s on the docket? Atlanta (who will be coming off a four-game jihad at Shea Stadium) at home for three, Toronto (30-42 and against whom the Sox are already 5-1) at the Fens for five, and three more home games with the Tigers before the All-Star break hits. And please don’t forget that the Sox have been missing to injury their presumed number-two starter all season, as well as reliever Rich Garces, second baseman Rey Sanchez, and Ramirez for the better part of the last month. Only half-a-game out at this stage of the game is not bad, and all those injured players will most likely be back in a few weeks. Meanwhile, Mariano Rivera’s on the disabled list for the Yankees, Clemens is due for a breakdown, Andy Pettitte’s elbow could go again at any time, and "El Duque" Hernandez is still not quite right. Things ain’t so rosy over in Yankeeland, either.

Yes, the Red Sox got off to the best start in baseball this year, but those doggone Yankees have not been further than three games out the entire time, and it just worked out they they’re on top now. That’s what the Yankees do. But make no mistake: this is gonna be a shootout the rest of the way.

Get a grip, man. Think of the big picture.

* * *

The big picture. It’s so easy to get carried away with all that’s happened on the New England sports scene in recent months. The runaway success of all four of our local teams has offered us some brief distraction from the traumatic memories of September 11 and the ongoing Middle East conflict, and in turn allowed us some diversion by way of Super Bowl championships, playoff successes, and pennant races. Even when the dark side of sports creeps in, i.e., the specter of a labor stoppage, we can at least take refuge in the daily offerings of professional sports, whether that involves planting yourself in front of the tube watching the Sox on NESN, hightailing it to Fenway or the Fleet for a firsthand view, or just reading the sports pages on the way to work. While the world is going to hell around us, our teams offer us sanctuary from the realities of the page-one headlines, and we can be content in the knowledge that we’ll always have that outlet.

But what happens when even sports themselves don’t offer enough of an escape? People die every day, yet we only hear seem to hear about them if they’re prominent, if we know them, or if they perish tragically. For baseball fans, all three of those characteristics converged with the death of St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile this past weekend. Since we live in an American League baseball town, we are not quite as familiar with Kile and his career as many National Leaguers are, but the fact that a 33-year-old athlete could die in his sleep of natural causes is still baffling. For many in their 30s and 40s, as I am, death makes its initial intrusion into your life when you receive word of the passing of your grandparents, then your parents’ friends, and perhaps even your parents themselves. It is most difficult when you lose your own peers. Perhaps you lost a grade-school or collegiate friend way too early in life, and those instances tend to traumatize you forever and presumably force you to appreciate life a little more. Kile’s death does that to many of us who love sports, and love life. Thirty-three years old? How do you tell a wife that her husband never woke up? How do you tell five-year-old twins that their dad’s never coming home again?

I recently attended the funeral of former Phoenix colleague Caroline Knapp, a friend whose parents had both died of cancer a year apart from each other, and whose mother’s side of the family had a history of the disease. At age 42 she was diagnosed herself, and despite being given a range of three months to two years to live, she was gone in six weeks. Other than just nodding and acknowledging that she probably was dealt a bad genetic hand (as Kile may have been), it is extremely difficult to accept and understand the passing of someone who you might view as just like you. At my friend Caroline’s funeral, her brother began a moving eulogy with the following parable:

Satan once called all his advisers together to determine how to destroy meaning in peoples’ lives. One devil said, "Tell them that their sins are so overwhelming that they are all doomed." A second said, "Tell them that all their sins are forgiven, and they have nothing to worry about." A third said, "Tell them there is no God, and anything goes." Finally, Satan silenced them and said, "No, those things don’t matter to human beings. Just tell them they have plenty of time."

Enjoy the Sox’ run, appreciate Fenway Park, and relish the distractions that take you away from the ugliness and uncertainties of the world. Just don’t let those diversions take such prominent roles in your life that they make you forget that the Kiles and the Knapps and the families of those who didn’t make it out of the WTC will never know how good they once had it —that they will never understand, nor ever be the same, despite their assumption that their whole lives were still ahead of them.

Plenty of time? The hell there is.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com