Cursed To First - Sox and Pats forever.

Dustin Pedroia wins the weekend

As I type this, on my husband's wheezing old laptop in a cottage deep in the wilds of extreme Western Massachusetts, the Red Sox are, justly, dominating the bottom-feeding Astros 9-3 in the ninth. The Adrian / Papi combo seems to have kicked in nicely, just in time for interleague to be over, but let's not dwell on that.

What's truly important at this point is that no matter what else happens from here, Dustin Pedroia has put his stamp of ownership on this weekend, with both authority and finality.

Dustin Pedroia and the Truly, Awesomely, Fearsomely Epic At-Bat

It was the bottom of the fifth inning. The Red Sox trailed 2-1 against Angels righty Jered Weaver, who came into tonight's game among the league's top pitchers with a record of 6-0, and looking for a record-setting seventh win in a row to start a season.

"Well," I Tweeted sarcastically. "The opposing team has now scored two runs, and therefore has an insurmountable lead." That's really how it has begun to feel, lately, with all the RISP problems making timely hits, let alone runs, hard to come by.

Even when first Carl Crawford, and then Jason Varitek and Jacoby Ellsbury reached base (this last on a fielder's choice) -- even, in other words, with Dustin Pedroia coming up and two of the game's fastest runners on the basepaths, there was nary a chicken being counted by me.

No way I would've predicted just what would follow next, anyway.

Down is Up

...left is right, etc. Ichiro, of all people, lost sight of a ball in the sun of late-afternoon right field at Fenway, letting Jed Lowrie reach third base safely, and then Carl Crawford hit a walkoff single that scored the Legend. And thus, with the first walkoff win of the season, the one game the Red Sox were expected to lose this weekend -- right up until it started today, even when it would mean a sweep -- they won, at the last minute, and in unlikely fashion.

"Unlikely"goes for the Sox in macrocosm, too, so far this season. They have defied every expectation, from the certainty that they would probably flounder during their West Coast swing, to the assumption that they would then feast on the soft underbelly of the Orioles, before returning for another strong homestand.

As it turned out, they went on an ass-kicking rampage in Oakland and Anaheim, inexplicably dropped the series in Baltimore, and did indeed look headed for another blindingly frustrating loss this afternoon before a pitch was even thrown, given the pitching matchup: AARP member Tim Wakefield vs. "King" Felix Hernandez. Sure, piece of cake. Or so, of course, we thought.

The Dempsey Debacle

Rick Dempsey, originally uploaded by Keith Allison on Flickr.

My TV was muted, and the nasal tones of Joe Castiglione were floating over the airwaves into my home by the second innning, so I didn't hear tonight's worst from MASN broadcaster Rick Dempsey, who filled in alongside Don Orasillo in the NESN booth with Jerry Remy said to be battling flu.

But if Remy can't come back tomorrow night, I would honestly rather they enlist Tim McCarver to co-host than have Dempsey back again. Seriously. What little I heard of Dempsey was that bad -- for just one example out of many, he called JD Drew an "Orioles killer," after which he was swiftly informed by Orsillo that Drew is hitting .238 against Baltimore. I really think you could've taken your average Red Sox fan off the street to do color, and they'd do about as well as Dempsey's constant spew of cliches, truisms, nonsensical blather and misstatements tonight.

Dempsey was so bad that he was actually lifted for relief color man Nick Cafardo in the seventh inning, though the ostensible reason was that Dempsey had to get ready to inflict himself on Orioles fans on the MASN postgame show. I can only imagine he killed at least some of their winning buzz.

Meanwhile, the play on the field was just as painful as the announcing.

Of umpires on acid, and the Catching Situation

Maybe not acid. Maybe shrooms. Or peyote. Or ayahuasca. Whatever their hallucinogenic substance of choice, the umpires out in Anaheim seemed to have consumed it in large quantities before both of the last two games, but last night especially.

Los LOBos back up Beckett in the end

"Hi. I'm Josh Beckett, and I'll be serving you your own asses on a platter tonight."

First, and foremost, let me breathe a HUGE sigh of relief for Kevin Youkilis, whose X-Rays are apparently negative after he fouled a ball off his left shin in the first inning last night, and was taken out of the game.

NESN kept showing the trainers in the dugout peeling back Youk's sock to reveal an ugly purple welt on his leg, near where the shin bone meets the ankle. When it happened, it had looked so much like the foul off the instep that downed Pedroia last year that I told Youk half-jokingly through my television, "Don't be pulling a Pedey here." When he didn't return to the field, I yelled, "I didn't mean it!!"

And thus began an, er, adventurous night.

Red Sox Opening Weekend Photoblogging, Part 2

Still getting random ice cream headaches thinking about last night's awful outcome? Here, have some more photos...from the OTHER win so far this season. Oy. I think I need to go lie down.

However, I will first note that I am still accepting sponsorship offers for my attendance at Fenway for the rest of the season as good luck charm. I've been there for both of the games they've managed to pull out so far...

About 48 hours after Opening Day, it was back to the park with Sam to see Josh Beckett bitch-slap the Yankees. What outs there were aside from Ks of the variety that sent Josh a-swaggerin' off the field just like old times were mostly tough grounders hit in the vicinity of Dustin Pedroia.

In other words, it was as if the game had been designed with me in mind.

Red Sox Opening Weekend Photoblogging, Part 1

You don't want to think about these epically frustrating losses to the Rays the last two nights, do you? No! Of course not! Wouldn't it be nicer simply to savor the only two wins for the Sox so far this season -- the only two wins it feels, in moments like this, that they will ever have again?

Well, then, why not take a gander at these photos from Opening Day, here in Part 1, and the Sunday night game against the Yankees, in Part 2, that I've taken this freaking long to get processed been saving for just such an occasion?

Opening Day with Dustin Pedroia

The last time I'd been to a game at Fenway before attending Opening Day this year, Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis both had been on the disabled list for quite some time. Their absence was palpable to me then, and throughout the offseason.

Then, yesterday, they were two of the first players I saw -- and for someone with a cravin' for a Laser Show, especially, the game turned out to be an all-you-can-eat-buffet of awesomeness.  

Notes on Red Sox Opening Day

Here are the results of the last seven Opening Days, at home and away, according to the Baseball Almanac:

2004 - Road Opener 04/04/04 @BAL -- L 7-2;  Home Opener 04/09/04 vs. TOR L 10-5 
2005 - Road Opener 04/03/05 @NYY -- L 1-0; Home Opener 04/11/05 vs. NYY W 8-1
2006 - Road Opener 04/03/06 @TEX -- W 7-3; Home Opener 04/11/06 vs. TOR W 5-3
2007 - Road Opener 04/02/07 @KC  -- L 7-1;   Home Opener 04/10/07 vs. SEA W 14-3
2008 - Road Opener 03/25/08 @OAK -- W 6-5; Home Opener 04/08/08 vs. DET W 5-0
2009 - Home Opener 04/07/09 vs.TB -- W 5-3; Road Opener 04/11/06 @ LAA L 6-3
2010 - Home Opener 04/04/10 vs. NYY -- W 9-7; Road Opener 04/11/06 @KC L 4-3

I mention this because there appears to have been some panic floating about, at least on Twitter, about today's loss and various players' performances. Looking at these numbers, it seems that if there's any pattern, it's that the Red Sox tend to split their home and road openers, and (shocka!) they tend to win at home (this is also how the team has been built since time immemorial).

There have been two years that the Red Sox won the road opener. Neither of those years (2006 and 2008) was a World Series year. In their World Series years, the Red Sox lost their road openers, and in '04 they lost their home opener, too.

Ultimately, there's no correlation between Opening Day results and full-season results, but just keep that little factoid in mind.

And look. I get it. When I was a novice fan, I thought panic in the streets was the way I showed my intensity and dedication and enthusiasm for the game. I thought if I didn't break things whenever they lost, it looked like I didn't care. Now I realize, it just made me look like a n00b. Which is exactly what anybody making sweeping pronouncements about today's game looks like to me now.

Passion and intensity, for me, have come to mean deepening knowledge and understanding of what's going on in the game, dedication in the form of strict game watching / attendance throughout the season, and going down with an injury-riddled ship (*cough2010cough*) if need be.

None of this requires hysteria, denial, generalization, complete lack of perspective, or breathless phone calls to talk radio. Just sayin'.

So. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I also do not wish to suggest that there isn't room for both praise and criticism after our first real look at the team.