Brenden Donnelly Has Smote Your Ass
Yesterday afternoon’s home opener was about as interesting a game as you can have, considering there was literally one half inning where the result was even a little bit in doubt. There was a little bit of everything from awesome pitching, a finely-tuned offense, some gamesmanship, and, for good measure to keep the attention of people that like 24 a little too much, a bench clearing incident.
I’m going to talk about the boring stuff first…Josh Beckett. He was just completely in control this game, doing such crazy things as holding the Mariners to two hits, and striking out Ichiro three times, which is probably the baseball equivalent of trying to kill Jack Bauer with an Air Soft gun. This will be my last reference of a television show I don’t like and don’t watch. I promise.
The Red Sox offense, which had been lulled into a weather depressed coma, sprung to life, helped out by Jeff Weaver not having the ability to throw strikes, and unleashing their bats like the proverbial hounds on the off-chance he did throw one in the strike zone. Yup, same guy that clinched the World Series for the Cardinals last year. The highlight of The Weave abuse was JD Drew leaning out over home plate and hitting an outside pitch. When he did, I turned to my girlfriend and said “Get Wall,” thinking the chances of a home run was slight. Of course I misjudged both the depth and location of the hit. It’s early in the season for me too, folks.
The run parade didn’t really stop when The Weave was relieved of his pitching duties after two innings. Jake Woods, and Brandon Morrow combined for three innings of five hit, five walk, six run ball before the Red Sox finally took their foot off the break a bit (more on that in a second). A visibly stoned Jeff Weaver commented “I could have done that.”
The last run was scored when Official Player of Dewey’s House 2007 Eric Hinske (more on this, also) doubled, moved to second when Wily Mo Pena grounded out, and scored on Mike Lowell’s sacrifice fly. When Hinske touched the plate, the score stood at 14-1.
Mike Timlin made his season debut by actually aging on the mound, and gave up two runs.
There was also some chippiness present in the form of Jose Guillen taking umbrage to Brendan Donnelly grabbing his balls after striking him out. The ball grabbing was likely a result of Donnelly taking umbrage to Guillen telling an umpire that he had pine tar on his glove last year. Also, Guillen was a teammate of Donnelly with the Angels and was hit by a pitch, and then publicly too umbrage to no Angel pitcher hitting a batter in retaliation. Donnelly took umbrage to that. Umbrage.
Anyway, Guillen yelled at Donnelly, and Donnelly became a True Red Sox by doing what guys like Boston heroes such as Derek Lowe would do…he grabbed his balls again. Benches cleared, and the situation defused without anyone throwing a sucker punch like Graig Nettles, and no one flipping his shit (I would have loved to see Dustin Pedroia being held back by JD Drew, Wily Mo Pena, and David Ortiz because Willie Bloomquist called him “Little Shit”). It’s almost too bad Guillen and Donnelly never really got in each other’s face, because Guillen is a known loose cannon, and Donnelly just look like he can bench press 700lbs.
Funny line of the exchange? Don Orsillo: “The benches are clearing and Donnelly has removed his glasses.”
Guillen was thrown out of the game, and to defuse the situation more, umpire Phil Cuzzi decided that a 1-1 fastball that hit Kenji Johjima in the ass was intentional enough to throw Donnelly out of the game. I hope Donnelly text messaged Guillen “U R PW3nD” from the clubhouse after.
Jerry Remy also tried to stir some controversy by saying how he might not have scored Hinske on the sacrifice fly. I personally thing two very distinct things about this line of thought…
1. If you are a professional team (not college, but professionals), there is no such thing as running up the score. If you don’t want a team to score that 14th run on a sacrifice fly, then get better pitching.
2. If I were a professional, I would take the embarrassment of being shown up (not by dancing or celebrating that 14th run, but by it scoring in the first place) over having the other team stop trying. I would be endlessly pissed if some team put their bench in the game and stopped trying to play at all. Take the pity elsewhere.
Finally, a housekeeping note. Every year we’ve done this site, there seems to be a Red Sox player I am draw to, and tend to root for a little bit harder than I should. This player is usually an underappreciated non-star player, and he’s always been a hitter. In 2004, it was Mark Bellhorn (we actually had a Bellhorn walk watch, combined with a Youkilis watch when he was called up). In 2005, it was the Youkilis/Roberto Petagine combination. Last season, it was Wily Mo Pena. And this year, it is Eric Hinske. I’m not sure exactly why, other than he looks like the stereotypical frat guy you can find at any college with a Greek life. It’s become a running joke that when he does everything, I say something frat-life related for comedy’s sake.
The reason I’m telling you this is that in the near future, we’re going to have seven days of content on Dewey’s House, at least for the season. We’ll have features (like how we did the best players at every position in Red Sox history), game recaps (like this one) and the like during the week. During Saturday’s we’ll have a prospect report (this will likely start in a few weeks) and then on Sunday mornings, you’ll see kind of my take on the state of baseball for the week, a look at Red Sox games from the weekend, and upcoming, a stat report for the Sox hitters/pitchers, and then MLB power rankings. The tentative title for this project is Eric Hinske and Kappa Epsilon Gamma presents Red Sox Wrap Up.
Huge game tonight. The Fenway debut of Daisuke Matsuzaka against wunderkind Felix Hernandez.
Donnelly removing his glasses is the equivalent of Hulk Hogan tearing off his yellow shirt.
Guillen is very fortunate that Brendan was feeling generous and spared his life.