How ’bout those Yankees, huh? Dropping two to the Kansas City Royals?
Yankees Suck! Yankees Suck!
What? The Red Sox played tonight too? And they lost as well?
Crap.
Oh, wait, I know that…I was there. Freezing my butt off in section 41 with Kelly O. Yes, section 41 in the bleachers. The seats were specially chosen because I thought it would be the only game I saw during opening week and I wanted to be nearer to the bullpen guys to cheer them and thank them for 2007. Of course, both my bullpen guys (Kyle Snyder and Mike Timlin for those new to the blog) weren’t there tonight. And I kept referring to Bryan Corey, David Aardsma and Julian Tavarez as “the guys who took Kyle’s job” but aside from that I didn’t regret sitting back there.
The Good:
Kenny Rogers. Yep, Kenny Rogers. He jogged around the entire park for better than an hour. I don’t know what kind of person he is ‘in real life’, but he obviously has a good work ethic. And he’s in great shape (standard disclaimer here:) for someone his age*. I was quite impressed with him.
Fenway security escorted one of the idiot drunks sitting next to me out without my having to say anything. It’s nice not to be the bad guy. God he was a schmuck, though.
Kelly and I saw Jere and we got to be three blogging, photo taking geeks together for a while. 🙂
David Aardsma looked pretty good on the mound.
Sean Casey filled in nicely for Mike Lowell.
Which leads us to “The Bad”:
I haven’t read a wrap up of the game so this question is semi-rhetorical. What the hell happened to Mike Lowell?
Sprained thumb? Sprained thumb? WTF? From where we were, we had no idea something happened. “Now pinch hitting for Mike Lowell. Number 22, Sean Casey” we hear Carl Beane say and Kelly and I can’t figure out what the hell happened. I can’t think of the right person to text so I text KellyJ…who was doing something NON baseball related and I freaked out with my “what happened to Lowell” text (sorry Kelly!). She DID get to a tv in time to text me back with ‘sprained thumb’. Great.
More Bad: Jon Lester. I think he hates me. I think I’ve seen him pitch in person now four times at Fenway and once in Portland…and I’ve seen him win once. Once. (Granted, it was a good one…one-hitter with Jonathan Papelbon vs Kansas City.) Again, I haven’t read any re-caps yet but I don’t look forward to reading “I felt good/it was just a few bad pitches/at least I’m healthy this ear and it’s just bad pitching not because I was sick” again. Now anyone who knows me or reads this blog knows how I feel about Jon and what I did to show my support when he was sick. All that aside, his pitching annoys the hell out of me.
Not that I could do better. Easy for me to sit on my ass and judge, I know. Cut me some slack, it’s after midnight.
More bad: Save for Aardsma (and Papelbon, Delcarmen and Okajima – the only 3 left in the bullpen at the end of the game) the bullpen stunk like cheese. Stinky, yucky, gross, French, cheese. Yes, more than once I had the thought “THIS is why Kyle got dfa’d?” or “Kyle could have gotten him out!”. I probably drove Kelly crazy with the Kyle references :0) . Although, unlike Lester, the bullpen didn’t piss me off. It’s a tough job to come in halfway through the game and it’s even tougher knowing (as KellyO explained it) that Mike Timlin is going to be tapping you on the shoulder by the end of the week. That’s a lot of pressure to put on the players mentally. Doesn’t mean it was any less painful to watch.
Incidentally, yes, we stayed for the entire game. And because we did, we got out of Fenway pretty quickly since so many of the bandwagoners bolted earlier. My fingers are still a little numb, but my loyalty to my team is in tact. 🙂
Congrats to the Tigers on their first win of the season.
*I don’t enjoy referring to players as being “old” especially since I’m now closer to 40 than 35, but Kenny was born the same year my parents got married. Damn. 😉
(Just saw the Papelbon Dunkin Donuts commercial where everyone smacks his ass. Yeesh.)
3 comments for “What the hell was that?”