He’s coming off a victory in the All-Star Game and the best half a season of his career. Can Josh Beckett keep trucking along like he’s in a 16-wheeler full or trucker bombs? Or will he finally hit a pothole in the road.

Face it: Beckett looks good in any setting this year.

Let’s face it, this afternoon’s game (Toronto Blue Jays at Red Sox, Fenway Park, 2 p.m.) is exactly the type of game where Beckett, and Sox aces past, would trip up. It’s exactly the type of game where the team would slowly start slipping into the toilet, eventually being sucked into a vortex so strong they end up in Australia, all while the Yankees sail to another division crown.

But all indications are that this year is different. Unlike the relative harmony in Beantown for all players not named Julio Lugo - hell, even J.D. Drew is getting a pass in the midst of another potential and questionably injury - there’s budding dischord in the Bronx. While ESPN glorifies the lack of unity and harmony of the 1977 Yankees (a note of warning: Oliver Platt is still very fat, even in a non-Showtime TV series), the current crop seems to be one five-game losing streak away from declaring anarchy and watching a steroid-crazed Jason Giambi charge George Steinbrenner in the owner’s box.

Wonder how crazy Sox fans are about Beckett this year? Check out the cheers from the pre-game intros. ‘Nuff said.

Just think about it: A-Rod is on the precipice of becoming the first $30 million man in professional sports, and is just making things worse by refusing to negotiate in season, all while Brian Cashman attempts to turn his third baseman’s impending opt-out into a nuclear PR war of epic proportions. Each day that ESPN plants a camera in Yankee Stadium (read: every day), it’s hard not to expect players and coaches to start showing up as famous military figures. Can’t you just see Cashman pulling out a triangular hat and going Napoleon on Joe Torre’s General Patten?

So, in the midst of all that, it’s hard to look at this as another normal season. And that makes it hard to expect another collapse, both from Beckett and the Sox. And while all Sox fans are used to looking at Toronto as a bugaboo, this is Beckett vs. Josh Towers, a pitcher who has been pulverized by past Sox teams worse than a Wolfgang Puck (gratuitous editor’s note: doesn’t the name Wolfgang Puck make you want to grab a fork? It just seems to scream macaroni and cheese and spare ribs, doesn’t it? I though so, too) slab of beef.

Is one of those for me, or are you just a poorly hydrated trucker on a 16-hour mission? It’s a question we could be asking Josh and the Sox any day now.

And Beckett has been cruising. So maybe he’s got a couple trucker bombs sitting in the seat next to him, with a load of empties along the floorboards. Maybe this afternoon he’ll give the Jays another 10-4 and send them on their way.

– Cameron Smith