Man The Lifeboats

Control. Control. It's only one game. Must maintain Control.

The hell I do.

After all the hysteria, hoopla and high hopes, the 2007 Boston Red Sox opened the season by taking a hot, steaming dump in the fountain at Kansas City's Kaufman Stadium. Owner John Henry sat in the front row and watched as he spent the first million of his $160 million payroll. What did he get for his cool mil on this warm KC afternoon? Not a million dollar effort, that's for sure. Let's look at the litany of horrors.

- A disgusting 7-1 loss
- Four innings, eight hits and five earned runs from Curt Schilling who was awful from beginning to aborted end.
- 3K's and a putrid relay throw from Julio Lugo (good thing we gave up AGon's defense for some offense eh?)
- Two boneheaded baserunning plays (Pedroia being thrown out at second by 150 ft. He wasn't even in the picture when the second baseman was waiting for him. And Youkilis who was only thrown out by about 40 ft.)
- A towering home run on the first pitch from Hideki Okajima
- 1 for 11 from Lowell, and the Pathetic Twins Crisp and Varitek. At least Pedroia had a couple of hits or the bottom of the lineup would have been even more of a black hole.
- 10 K's. Everyone in the lineup except Drew and Pedroia struck out at least once.

Ugh. Many more games like this and you won't have to worry about Tito going back to chewing tobacco. He's going to start smoking crack.

Yes, yes we know it's only one game and there's a long way to go, but the Sox need to get off to a fast start playing the dregs of the AL West. You know the Yankmees are going to devour this trash when they come out here. Sure they will be a series of 11-10 games, but they will all count as W's. The Sox can't give these ones away, which is clearly what they did on Monday. The scary thing is that the Sox looked like a very flawed team, inexcusable with their payroll. Curt looked old, Manny looked disinterested, Crisp, Lowell and Varitek looked lost and the pitching staff looked weak. It was so...2006...that it was jarring.

The offense was particularly offensive, although you have to take into consideration that the Sox were facing future Hall of Famer Roger Clemens....what?...that wasn't the Rocket out there?...that was Gil Meche?...He the butt of everyone's joke this winter when he scored his 5 year/$55 million? The only joke yesterday was on the Sox as they flailed helpless at the offerings of the Royal Ace (Isn't that an oxymoron?). Excuse me. I couldn't help but thinking that must have been a past Cy Young award winner knifing through the high priced lineup like a sickle through dry wheat.

The Sox have been roundly beaten for 48 hours and only a solid Josh Beckett outing will reignite pennant fever on Wednesday. If Bonehead Josh comes out and tries to throw fastballs through the backstop and the Royals starting depositing balls on the grassy knoll, there will be a regional suicide watch for all Sox fans.

But I'm okay. I will be patient.

By the way, is there such a thing as a must win game in the first week of the season?