Porn Valley [www.aolsportsblog.com]- Folks, it’s important to have a back-up plan. Wanna be a model or TV game show host? That’s great, but why not take a few plumbing courses as well, just in case things don’t work out.

It’s a point that wasn’t lost on Julian Tavarez. Even though the guy’s currently enjoying success as the fifth starter and resident cult hero on the Boston Red Sox, he always kept his options open. As he recently told Gordon Edes at Boston.com’s Red Sox blog, one of those options included porn star.

While talking to Julian Tavarez the other day about his impoverished upbringing in the Dominican — he never went to school, sold newspapers, cleaned shoes and helped his dad, a construction worker — Tavarez sheepishly admitted he had an odd ambition as a kid. If he couldn’t be a baseball player, he said, he thought he might have a future as an adult movie star.

We’re not talking about aspiring to be the next Gary Cooper, either. The way Julian explained it, he was exposed to a lot of that stuff as a kid, and saw it as a way to a better life.

Although the idea of the phone-punchin’, Ortiz-shoes-wearin’ Tavarez in a porn flick is unstoppably awesome, I think I speak for everyone, everywhere when I say thank god the baseball thing worked out for him.