Ring It In

(Photo from Boston.com)

Okay, NOW baseball season has officially started. Unfortunately, due to work obligations, I was nowhere near either a computer or a TV yesterday so I've yet to see the entirety of the ring ceremony, not to mention the game. I was doing Harvard Centennial type things, one of which included listening to Robert and Jonathan Kraft speak and which I cannot write about because it was off the record. Suffice it to say that I want the Kraft family to adopt me. Like now.

As for the Sox, I have seen only the snippets that NESN has been airing on SportsDesk and noticed that a) Dougie looked mighty sharp, perhaps in an effort to make Theo jealous, b) Matsuzaka also looked sharp in an entirely different yet very encouraging way, and c) the Bill Buckner thing surely would have reduced me to a sobbing, hysterical mess.

I also managed to catch some uncut locker room footage of our own little Second Base Elf talking about Buckner and how great it was to see the ovation for him. "People forget how great a player he was," he said, "and they judge him by one error that fucked shit up." I've got a sneaking suspicion that Pedroia might challenge Beckett to see who can make best use of the seven-second delay this season. Excellent.

So good on ya, Red Sox. Way to usher in a new season. The winning helped too, surely. And if Matsuzaka is gonna be our stopper this year, well, that's plenty encouraging now isn't it?

Of course, in the "Kristen dissolves into tears" portion of the event, you couldn't do any better than this. The Tedy Bruschi/Terry Francona friendship is one of my favoritest things in all of Boston sports. I love it so much. And I love them so much. And the mutual respect and love they have for each other - and the empathy because of the serious health issues they've both faced - is wonderful and probably rare in this era of giant egos and even bigger paychecks. It's refreshing and it's sweet, which is a word not often associated with sports when you're not talking about champagne.

I wish I had more to add on the subject but as I've not seen everything yet, it'd be merely conjecture at this point. I look forward to watching the Ring Ceremony when I get a chance. I'm sure I'll have more thoughts at that time.

As for tonight, the Sox finally put their last Opening Day (total count: 4) behind them and get down to the business of playing some baseball. Little Jonny Lester takes the mound tonight and here's hoping he's fueled by the fire for another ring.

Oh, and I managed to score playoff tickets to next Tuesday's Game 4 match-up between the Canadiens and the Bruins. So, in all likelihood, I'll be there live and in person to see the Bruins get eliminated from the playoffs. But it's playoff hockey! It's excellent!

Anyway, happy baseball season, kids.