Last week, The Boston Globe announced a monumental decision to move all of its staff-produced Red Sox content behind its online paywall. Not to worry, however: 43-year-old Carver man and friend of the site Francis Flynn is an avid Red Sox fan, Boston-born and bred.
Flynn’s day job is maintaining a 10-acre cranberry bog and tract of farmland that has been in his family for three generations. But his passion is following his region’s most beloved baseball team. He watches nearly every game and recently signed an agreement to provide Fenway Pastoral readers with his own recaps throughout the 2014 regular season. All we had to do in return was promise to publish his pieces unedited and to send him a case of Miller High Life (bar bottles were specified) every week.
CARVER, Mass. – Alright, my family’s been getting the Globe delivered to the house here since Dukakis was in diapers. This whole deal may be a little rough at first for awhile but I’m pretty familiar with this whole converted pyramid structure or whatever heck they call it. But this ain’t that hard right? I’m gonna put this box score into virtual words using a trusty Gateway desktop computer I purchased at the old Circuit City (rest in peace). (You want player quotes though you’ll have to go see about that on the tube.)
I don’t know how many of yous actually got to watch much of the Sox game live today. Normally, I’d have missed it because I’d be out on my cranberry bog yanking out the dead roots in preparation for the spring harvest. But the raw, rainy weather had me ready to knock off around 3 o’clock. Gametime.
Alls you really need to know, to conjure up an accurate picture of the season opener, is that if Jonny Lester keeps pitching like he did today, this team’s gonna win some ballgames.
I’ve been worried about my man Jonny most of the spring. His psyche can’t be all that stable after seeing Papi get that extension and he’s just sittin around twiddling his thumbs. But he took the ball on opening day and looked like he did in October. Eight punchados. One walk. Whaddya have to say to that? Not Pedro or anything but not bad.
He made a bad pitch to Cruz in the 7th, no doubt about that one. But yous don’t need me to tell you how Cruz was cheating a couple years back and he’s probably still got a lot of ill-gotten muscle from his time on the roids. And, no, I’m not talking about hemorrhoids. I can’t say I can wish those upon anyone. Then again, I’m am a Christian and I believe every man pays his penance one way or the other…especially since he had the nerve to hit one off Jonny.
Taking a quick gander at the box score here, I’m seeing Dan Nava had a tough day at the plate. That’ll happen from time to time. He was probably pressing extra seeing how he was the leadoff guy today. Lotta pressure. You put him further down the order and he just sneaks up on ya a bit more. I’ll cut him some slack. Obviously he’s gonna have a bit of work out in front of him to get that average up now. But overall though, this is probably the year he turns into an outfield version of Pedoria, all-star games and all that glory, or the team needs to give up. I’m not the one to say I suppose.
Yup, the Sox had their chances today but oh well. Can’t leave ten guys on base and expect that you’re gonna live to tell about it. Still, I expected Ortiz would hit a jack when he came up with two guys on late. I had the ending all written up on my computer but then had to delete it all and write this when he didn’t come through as expected.
So I’m thankful for the off day tomorrow. I need to get out ahead of some stuff on the bog so the damn Ocean Spray people don’t crawl up my ass again. (They already demoted me to “auxiliary supplier” which I guess is like getting sent down to the PawSawx.) Otherwise, I’ve got no chance of catching the Fenway opener on Friday afternoon.
Next up is Wednesday night, again in Baltimore. The beauty is there’s a new game – I can feel a win coming. And I’m never wrong.
Fenway Pastoral 