I hate to say I told you so.

Actually, I love to say I told you so.

According to my television, the baseball playoffs have started and the Boston Red Sox seem to be missing. If you remember correctly, I predicted in April, when the Red Sox were on their traditional tear, breaking out to the best record in baseball, that the BoSox would lose to the Yankees (as usual) by 10 games. Right on the money.

All right. I wasn’t perfect. I also predicted that Pedro Martinez (Spanish for “fragile”) would fall apart once again and not win seven more games as a starter for the rest of his playing days. Pedro won 20. I lost $7 on that one.

Plus, I hastily predicted stardom for the 300-pound first baseman Juan Diaz. Diaz, who tore up spring training, was up from the minor leagues just long enough to prove that he cannot hit major league pitching.

No one is perfect. Wait until next year.

Even a hardened Red Sox fan would have to admit that this was one of the strangest years in baseball history. Forget Ted Williams’ head frozen in a lab somewhere. Weirder than that.

If the boys in the Fort Myers VFW (cheapest, coldest beer in town) were told during spring training that the Red Sox would have TWO 20-game winners (Martinez and Derek Lowe), plus the batting champion in the wildly enigmatic Manny Ramirez (Spanish for “very strange”), and my personal enemy Tim Wakefield would win 11 games while flirting with winning the earned run average title, the boys would have predicted a World Series appearance, possibly a victory, the first since 1918.

They at least would have predicted a playoff appearance.

And they would have been wrong. The Sox actually lost more games at home than they did in once-“friendly Fenway.” Strange.

But the 2002 version of our favorite failures suffered from the same cardiac deficiency as the Cowardly Lion in “The Wizard of Oz.” No heart.

This team could not pull off late-inning heroics if their lives depended on it. (Ours do.) Try to think of one.

When the Yankees beat them in come-from-behind, ninth-inning victories in Yankee Stadium two games in a row, the Red Sox folded their tents. Their mettle then was tested in games against the best the National League had to offer, the Atlanta Braves and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Red Sox looked for a comfortable place to lie down, losing 10 games, virtually in succession; 10 games that put them out of the pennant race for good.

They played .500 ball for the rest of the summer. No heart.

But our latest manager, one Grady Little, said he was “satisfied” with the 90-plus win season, although he conceded that the team could have done better. Goodbye, Grady. Even if you feel that way, it is not acceptable to admit it, not when you are managing the Boston baseball team.

Once again, I will boycott the playoffs, then the World Series, at least until the Damn Yankees are eliminated. (Just who is going to do that?) I cannot stand to see them win another one. Not with noted turncoat Roger Clemens on the mound.

It is all too much for me.

Thank God for the Patriots (I think).

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.