4/16/07
Red Sox 7, Angels 2

Amazingly, after 314 consecutive days of pouring rain in the New England area, the Red Sox and Angels were able to squeeze in the annual Patriot’s Day game after a two hour delay.  While some random footrace was transpiring outside of the waterlogged Fenway Park, the Red Sox were cementing a 2 game sweep of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, on a day that will be forever marked in history by horrific events in Blacksburg, Virginia.

While the end result of this game was favorable (a 7-2 Red Sox victory), the game itself was rather dull, an observation perhaps accentuated by the craptastic weather.  At first, things weren’t going very well for Josh Becket, as he yielded a homer to the 2^nd batter of the game (former Sox SS Orlando Cabrera), and was then issued a very premature warning after unintentionally hitting superstar Vlad Guerrero on the hands.  

However, after the top of the first, in was all Boston.  The Sox piled on 6 runs in the bottom half of the first, 2 of which came on a single from Manny Ramirez, who looks to be heating up after a slow start.  While I was worried that Beckett would be handcuffed and constrained by the idiotic warning from umpire Rick Reed in the first inning, he dispatched the hapless Angels with relative ease over the next 5 innings, never really running into any trouble after Cabrera’s monster shot in the first. 

David Ortiz, who is now officially in prime “Papi” form, added the only other Red Sox run with a 4^th inning bomb into the blacked-out bleacher seats in center field.  Reliever Hideki Okajima looked extremely sharp in relief of Beckett, striking out two in the 7^th inning, sporting a nasty back-door curveball that should be very effective against right-handed hitters over the course of the year. 

The only other eventful occurrence of the afternoon in Boston was one of comic relief: the NESN camera’s blatantly caught a fan (a grown adult male) tossing a slice of pizza at another fan 15 feet away, for no apparent reason.  Why would someone do that? Are people just assholes?  Wait, don’t answer that. 

Anyway, we all know that the baseball season is a marathon, and not a sprint. In the marathon of 2007, however, the Boston Red Sox are off to a nice little start out of the gate.  The starting rotation, the bullpen, the new acquisitions (especially Julio Lugo, who made several nice defensive plays last night to go along with 2 hits) are firing on all cylinders.  The Sox will try to keep rolling behind Daisuke Matsuzaka in Toronto tonight, a series which will determine the temporary resident of first place in the AL East. 

After the series in Toronto, the Sox return home this weekend, and will take on some team from the Bronx…       

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