Posted by David Pevear, Sun Staff

So what happens after your team wins two World Series titles in four years? Apparently, nothing interesting.

The Red Sox are conducting their 2008 spring training in Fort Myers, Fla. Smiles and sunshine pour over NESN countless hours each day. The world is a wonderful place because the Boston Red Sox are in it. But is anything really happening in Fort Myers besides the sun and Manny rising each morning and all giving thanks to their maker for allowing them to play for Tito?

There were no real big off-season signings by the Red Sox like last year, when Daisuke Matsuzaka, J.D. Drew and Julio Lugo all arrived in Fort Myers lugging millions and burdens of expectations. If they so choose on Opening Day, the Red Sox can start the same nine players they did in Game 4 of the World Series last October.

The Red Sox did sign Bartolo Colon to a minor-league contract on Monday, two years too late to qualify as big news, unless you are measuring the news in accordance with Colon’s weight. He is 7-13 since winning the 2005 American League Cy Young Award as an Angel. He is a round 34-year-old with an unreliable right shoulder who, perhaps, could pitch some of the innings that the non-sculpted 41-year-old with the wobbly right shoulder was being counted on to pitch. But really, aren’t those innings what Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz are for?

Lester and Buchholz are really the only important stories in this Red Sox camp. The sooner they are ready to handle significant innings, the greater the Red Sox will be.