To put it simply, we won! On Opening Day! Against the Evil Empire! The first of many, folks. The first of many.
The opening ceremonies were un-announced and very nicely done, complete with fireworks, Don Orsillo, and Joe Castiglione, with special guests Steve Tyler, Keri Hilson, LeBron James, Dr. Dre, and Neil Diamond. You read right. Neil Diamond finally sang “Sweet Caroline” live. And it was so good to see Ryan Westmoreland in attendance.
The highlight? Pedro Martinez threw out the first pitch! That really takes you back, doesn’t it? They unfurled the American flag over the Green Monster and who should step out from behind it. Papi was pretty psyched.
I feel compelled to mention that YES didn’t show any footage of Pedro. Apparently, they previewed the season like they’d been doing every day for the past half-year because every moment must revolve around the New York Yankees. Ugh. Just another occurrence that reveals why they’re, well, the Yankees.
And I would like to take this opportunity to point out to all of the naysayers that it was the offense, not the defense, that carried the day. You really don’t get much more proof that the offense packs a powerful punch than a final score of 9-7.
We were down by three heading into the sixth. That was when our bats pretty much exploded. Youk smacked a triple that scored two, and Beltre hit a sac fly to score Youk. Tie game. The Yanks scored two more runs in the top of the seventh. Then Dustin Pedroia hit one of those home runs everyone told him he couldn’t hit while he was growing up because there’s no way someone of his size should have that kind of power. A two-runner into the Monster. Huge. After that, Youk scored again on a passed ball. Pedroia added another RBI in the eighth. And there you have the nine runs in all their glory.
The best part of it is that those nine runs were scored due to many different kinds of offense. You had big ball, and you had small ball. There were manufactured runs, and there were opportunistic runs. What that shows is that the offense can get it done in any situation; we know we can always score when we need to.
The only bad part of the game was the only part of the game everyone was sure would be great heading into it: Josh Beckett, our supposed ace in the hole. Yeah, not so much. He got rocked. Five runs on eight hits with three walks and back-to-back jacks in less than five innings is not what we wanted to see from him during the first game of the year. I mean, they were all over his fastball, and he wasn’t locating his off-speeds. That’s a terrible combination. Thankfully, we’ve got a day off tomorrow so the bullpen can rest up. But I feel pretty safe in saying that nobody saw that coming. There was absolutely nothing that occurred during Spring Training to even remotely suggest that he would have any sort of issue. If this were any other pitcher, I’d chalk it up to nerves. But this is Josh Beckett: not only has he been in Boston for years, but he thrives on pressure situations. He should have owned. He didn’t. I won’t worry about it unless he bombs his next start, but all I’m saying is that it was really unsettling.
Schoeneweis relieved him and did work; a scoreless, spotless frame. Ramirez came on and allowed the sixth and seventh New York runs. Okajima got the win, Bard got the hold, and Paps got the save. He allowed a hit and threw ten pitches, seven for strikes.
We have a day off tomorrow, as I said, and then we’re back to the usual start time of 7:00PM for the remaining two games of this series. Then another off day, then a road trip to the Midwest. We’ll be the first to break in Target Field. Hey, anything is better than the Metrodome. So, to emphasize: we beat the Yankees to win Opening Day. We took advantage of two rallies to bounce back twice. Resilience. Dominance. Awesomeness. Doesn’t get much better than that. That was the first regular season ballgame we’ve seen in a good, long time, and with the exception of Beckett, it didn’t disappoint. Just drink it in, folks. Baseball is back!
Boston Soul 