Back in the winter, when we got our first look at the baseball schedule, I was outraged. The MLB schedulers, in all their wisdom, had the Red Sox opening up against the New York Yankees. On Easter Sunday, no less.
There was plenty written about the season beginning on a Sunday night. That didn't bother me. What got me going was the opponent. The Yankees? At the start of the season? What a waste. We certainly didn't need another edition of the best rivalry in sports at the very beginning of the season.
Like many people, I thought Opening Day was a big enough draw in New England to stand on its own. Bring in Kansas City or Oakland to start the year. Save those Yankee games for mid-season when things heat up.
I now stand corrected. The intensity of the Boston/New York rivalry was exactly what we needed to jump-start the season. We saw terrific baseball theater this week. From the greatest Opening Night come-from-behind win in Red Sox history to a tough extra-innings loss on Wednesday.
The Sox hit the road for Kansas City with a losing record, and Sox fans are no doubt frustrated by a pair of Yankee comeback wins. There were missed opportunities over the past three games, and a feeling that the team let a couple of good chances slip away. Wednesday night was the first night we've bemoaned a lack of offense from the Sox, something a lot of us fretted about during the winter.
Sox fans are fired up. And that's a very good thing. We've got 159 to play, and already have our first controversy of the young season. Phone lines lit up on talk shows around New England as David Ortiz got off to a 1-for-11 start. Mike Lowell couldn't get in a game, even with two lefties starting, and fans wanted a quick change.
So much for the "boring" Red Sox. So much for the apathy of Red Sox Nation. NESN had its highest-rated Opening Day (or Night) in its history. In fact, Sunday night's 19.7 rating was one of the highest-rated regular-season games on NESN, ever.
Hosting WEEI's The Big Show Monday afternoon, the first off-day of the 2010 season, I took call after call from fans fired up about Ortiz going hitless the first night of the season. They wanted Lowell in the lineup, now. They wanted to talk about it.
The temperature flirted with 90 degrees on Wednesday afternoon, and some fans were getting as hot under the collar as they would during a June swoon. Baseball is back, and the daily soap opera that is the Red Sox is consuming us again. That's a good thing, even if a losing record is not.
And it's all because the Yankees were here to start things off. It was exactly what we needed to launch another marathon run to October.
