Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean...

All right it's 1 AM and I've had a few hours to calm down and write a little more rationally. Luckily I have awesome and supportive friends and neighbors to help me realize that the world is not ending. For example, while I was outside screaming and wailing and punching the water fountain, my friend Rocky commented "Hey, the Sox have the worst record in baseball now!" Thanks big guy. By the way, people are talking about you being gay, man. Just thought you should know.

So now that I've come down a bit (from the ledge I was standing on threatening to jump from! heh heh heh, I'm priceless) it's time to remember a few things.

It was colder than Mike's love life today. Like 40 degrees. NO ONE throws hard in that kind of weather, it's almost impossible to get loose. So perhaps Pedro's inability to throw harder than Mike's IQ is merely a byproduct of that. Also, Pedro is no stranger to getting shelled on the occasional opening day start. In 2002 he gave up like 5 earned runs against Toronto and rebounded to win 20 games. Also Baltimore has given him fits in the past, such as the worst start of his career, which happened to be last year against them. (which I also happened to sacrifice everything but my left testicle to go see. Thanks Pedro!) Baltimore is a good offensive team, they're going to score 6-7 runs quite a few times. I explicity remember last year Tommy Glavine got absolutely rocked in his opening day start and mentioned that he had "no feel whatsoever" for his changeup, and the cold weather was what was responsible for his horrible start, not an eroding skill set. And see, look how he turned out!

So it was OUR hitting then that killed us. But, in this case, it was stranded runners. Sure, stranded runners are frustrating, especially 14 of them. Nobody likes to be stuck at third base (except for Mike, who'd love to even get past 1st base on of these days with a real live girl) but the fact that we had 16 baserunners indicates some offensive output. Bill-Mill had 3 hits, Kapler 2, Manny's starting the season hot with 3 hits... We can't get unlucky like that very often.

One good example of how Nomar hurts us is the fact that Pokey Reese, God bless him and his bunting with 2 men in scoring position, is going to get pinch hit for a couple of times. However, that leaves us with a gaping hole at shortstop afterward, as Cesar Crespo proved by throwing in the dirt 5 feet in front of Millar later in the game. Hopefully this is not a situation I'll be seeing too often.

Also I was unfairly harsh at Francona. Personally, I might have had Embree warming up a little earlier, as Timlin was obviously useless. Pokey Reese MUST have been bunting on his own, there's no way Francona would actually instruct him to do something like that with two men on. And as for putting on the shift with Palmeiro up with men in scoring position, well... I'm just going to give him a mulligan on that one. He won't be doing it again. You get one, Francona. One.

Here's looking forward to Tuesday, where hopefully you'll see a happier Sox entry along with a Mets entry resembling my first one today. (Kaz Matsui went 0-5 WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM??????)