Numbness and tingling fingers for Beckett

Josh Beckett says that the numbness and tingling in his right ring and little fingers has been an on-going issue this season, indicating that it wasn’t something that just cropped up prior to Sunday’s poor start at Fenway Park. Manager Terry Francona, in announcing that Beckett would be bumped from his next start, indicated that it cropped up after sleeping on his right arm on Saturday night.“It’s just something I’ve been dealing with,” he said. “At some point, you’ve got to figure out what it is. It’s now what I want but at this juncture, it’s something that needs to happen.”Beckett said that he is not dealing with any pain.“I have some numbness in fingers I’m not used to having,” he said. “As far as pain goes, there’s pretty much no pain at all. It’s just that we’ve got to figure out what the hell it was … It’s something we’ve dealt with but I’ve never had to deal with it on that level.”Beckett said that trainer Mike Reinold has been running him through a series of tests that seem to indicate that he is not dealing with aneurysm or circulation issues.“That’s what we’re trying to stay away from,” he said. “Anytime there’s something wrong with your arm and you’re a baseball player – especially a pitcher, you obviously think the worst first but I’ve kind of been reassured by people that it’s not that.”For now, he said he’d prefer to a stay away from any type of tests that involves shooting dye into the blood stream to check for circulation issues.“I’m not a big fan of those arthrograms,” he said. “They cause a lot of unneeded soreness but if it gets to that point, we’ll do whatever we need to do.”He said that returning Tuesday at Yankee Stadium isn’t a certainty.“It’s still seven days away, so we’ll see,” Beckett said.