Right on, Brandon Moss. You get the game ball. Do they keep records for how many times a guy has been announced in the pregrame? Apparently, Moss was announced as a reserve on the roster, then J.D. Drew’s back flares up on him while all this is happening, so he gets announced as the starting right fielder. Batting 6th.
Anyway, his 9th inning solo home run was the key. Tied the game and sent it into extras, where the sox won 6-5.
More notes…
Thumbs Up: Manny Ramirez
Manny looks like he’s in August form already. Four RBI’s, including the game winner. Apparently that winter spent working out at Athlete’s Performance Institute in Arizona did him some good. He just might be my pick for AL MVP this year. Really, Manny looks like a different guy than year’s past. More on that in a future post.
Thumbs Up: Red Sox middle relievers not named Kyle Snyder
Javier Lopez, Bryan Corey, and Hideki Okajima get the Sox within a run. Without that effort, the 9th inning home run means nothing.
Thumbs Up: Keith Foulke
OK, he’s not on our team and yeah, he sucked for us at the end of his time here. But he still is a big reason for the 2004 championship and he pitched a solid inning after being out of baseball for a year. You gotta feel good for him.
Thumbs Down: Dice-K
A lot of what we saw at the end of last year. Too many pitches. Only lasting 5 innings.
And finally a word on Papelbon. His mechanics looks like he needs that additional week of spring training lost by having to play the Japan games.
Yes. It’s just the first game. Dice-K and Papelbon will have solid years. Not worried about that.
First Uh-Oh of the season: J.D. Drew’s back
Not the way anyone wanted to see his season start.
2 Comments
Thumbs up for Keith Foulke? These words would never be uttered by anyone living in the Boston area. After the way he handled his loss of ability in Boston I would love to be sitting out in the right field boxes of fenway latter this summer when he starts to warm up in a clutch situation…as always, the dirt dogs don’t beat around the bush about this sort of thing - http://tinyurl.com/322gau
As for everything else about game 1, they seemed eerily like the exact team that ended the last season. Seriously, Manny was hot at the end of the year, the line-up was basically the same, Dice K was the same, even Pap was giving up some scary hits towards the end as he was closing out the Rockies. As long as Josh is still unhittable, they should be fine. Otherwise, they’ll need Dice K to grow up a bit and learn to stop shaking ‘tek off.
Yeah…thats right. Thumbs up for keith foulke. OK, so I forgot about the whole Johnny from BK incident for a moment (this is what happens to west coast sox fans void of WEEI), but still…without him we don’t win 2004. Just remember that.