CHICAGO — Who knew that fried chicken and beer would prove to be so healthy for those involved in professional athletics?

The 2011 Red Sox will rightfully be recalled as an all-time baseball fiasco. They blew a nine-game lead (over the Rays) in the American League wild-card race with 27 games to go. After they missed the playoffs, a memorable Boston Globe story reported that certain pitchers were eating fried chicken and drinking beer during games in which they weren’t competing.

From the ashes of that mess, however, has come far more success than ignominy, and never more so than in this 2016 World Series. Theo Epstein, the Red Sox’s general manager, left for the Cubs in October 2011 and built this pennant-winning club in five years. Terry Francona, Boston’s manager, was essentially pushed out the door and now leads the Indians against the Cubs in this Fall Classic.

Half of the Cubs’ starting rotation, Jon Lester and John Lackey, made up two-thirds of the Chicken and Beer Bunch, with the retired Josh Beckett leading the pack by most accounts. Lackey started Game 4 Saturday night at Wrigley Field, and Lester, who lost Game 1 to the Indians at Progressive Field, will start Game 5 on Sunday night.

Lester now stands as the clear head of the Cubs’ stellar rotation, and what’s clear from listening to him is how much he benefited from spending time with Beckett and Lackey. Their 2011 goes down as an embarrassing hiccup in what was otherwise a fruitful relationship, one that still benefits Lester and the Cubs today.

“I go back to ’06, ’07,” Lester said Saturday in a Wrigley news conference. “Tito [Francona] came up to me in spring training, I think in ’06, and he basically said, ‘Stay in Josh Beckett’s pocket. Don’t leave his side. Follow him and see what he does.’ ”

Beckett owned a career 3.07 ERA in 14 postseason appearances, 13 of them starts, with 99 strikeouts and 21 walks in 93 ²/₃ innings. Lester enters Sunday with a 2.60 career postseason ERA in 20 appearances, 18 of them starts, having struck out 108 and walked 30 in 124 ²/₃ innings.

At the start of his career, Lester also saw first-hand another postseason whiz, Curt Schilling, who compiled an amazing 2.23 postseason ERA in 19 starts, striking out 120 and walking 25 in 133 ¹/₃ innings.

“Obviously there was a little bit more of an age gap between me and Schill,” said Lester, who is 32 to Schilling’s 49 and Beckett’s 36. “But you sit back, and you see all the stuff he does and he prepares. He’s more of a statistical kind of guy, whereas Beckett was more the physical side. … He spent more time in the gym and then would focus on the stat stuff when he needed to.”

Lester got to witness postseason mastery from both men, particularly when the Sawx won it all in 2007.

“That was the thing for me that amazed me, is nothing changed [in October],” Lester said. “They didn’t put any more emphasis on one thing or the other. It stayed consistent, and it was in their routine, and they dove into that. I think that was kind of their escape.

“Over the years, I kind of figured that out, that you stay in that routine and it kind of keeps you sane this time of year. It’s such a hard time of year with all the travel and game times and bouncing around with emotions and all this stuff. So if you’re able to have a separation, I think that can only help.”

Lester and the rest of his ’11 Red Sox buddies have made quite a separation from that dark episode. Even though that season proved so costly for so many, they seem to have grown richer from the experience.