Quick Opening Day Thoughts

I know it's officially been spring for a couple weeks, and we just passed the screw-job that is turning the clocks ahead, but I don't feel like it's really spring until I do some work in the yard, and I get to listen to the game while I do it.

I did the yard-work part this weekend, I look forward to the accompaniment of an AM broadcast next time out...

I really like the Sox this year. I know lots of people are boo-hooing over the departure of Johnny Damon, but I think Coco Crisp will be much better over the next four years than Damon will be.

Wily Mo Pena is just what Trot Nixon needs, a bashing right-handed platoon partner, and Keith Foulke looks like he's back to his old not-quite-dominating, yet somehow successful self.

It's hip to pick the Yanks this year, especially after signing Damon, but if you look at it, it's really just another past-the-prime free agent signing—the kind that has never worked for them yet...

Go Sox!

NOTE: Schilling will lose (hard) today in Texas, and the Sox bandwagon will get some more elbow room as people jump ship. That's fine by me. I know Schilling will be fine, and the Sox will prevail over thhe long haul. As an aside, knowing that Schilling is such a Republican, Bush-loving jackass, really makes it hard for me to like him.

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This is crap. Jimmy Rollins might be a nice guy, and normally, I'd be happy to root for any Yankee-held record to fall, but I'm sorry, picking late August to start your hitting streak is just bad timing. As far as I am concerned, that streak ended when the 2005 season did.

Part of what makes the 56-game hitting streak an impressive and as yet unattainable record is the grind of having to get a hit every day for two months. Joe Dimaggio didn't get a 180-day break in the middle of his hitting streak. Tony Gwynn never got credit for hitting .400 even though he did it over a 162 game period (more than once, I believe). He had to hit .400 for the season, not just a hot second-half rolling over to a hot first half.

I cannot even believe that people are going to count this streak.

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My new go-to baseball/Sox guy Chad Finn has a good season preview up.