Opening Day is finally here

Well, Opening Day of Baseball 2005 has finally arrived. I have a lot of different thoughts about opening day.

There has been a new advertisement on TV that has a guy sitting at a red light wearing a Sox cap. The guy is waiting for the red light to change when suddenly he starts jumping around in his car.

He just remembered that the Red Sox won the World Series. That's how I feel a lot of the time. I'll just be going about my day and it will suddenly hit me. Then I always smile or something and somebody will say, 'What's so funny?' or 'What are you smiling about?'

I tell them, 'The Sox won the Series,' and then the person who asked me the question will usually burst out smiling too. Then we'll both have a little moment of happy rememberance and then get back to work or whatever we were doing.

Last night we got a chance to go out to the movies. We looked through the paper and saw that Fever Pitch was playing. When this movie was being plugged by Fox during the World Series, I admit I was pretty indignant about it, especially when they had the actors running out on the field during the celebration when The Sox won. After seeing the previews for it though, I have to admit it looks like a decent movie and it would have been cool to go and see it the night before opening day, as kind of as a capper for the whole 2004 season.

Unfortunately, since 'Fever Pitch' is not opeing till April 8th, there was only one show and it was at 7:30. It must have been an early screening or something. 7:30 was outside of our babysitter window of opportunity so we went to see a different movie instead, 'Ms. Congeneality 2'.

Sandra Bullock, you little monkey woman...

I'm pretty excited about the baseball game tonight. Even though it's Opening Day, Sox / Yankees, I still feel like I'm maybe a little too keyed up for this. I mean, in the end, it's only one game.

Hopefully the Sox come out and kick Johnson's ass and chase him from the game early, letting Wells get into 'cruise mode'.

However, if the Sox lose, as dissapointed and pissed as I may be about it, it's not going to be the end of the world. There are still 161 games left after this one.

In the larger sense though, I feel it is important for the Sox to come out of the box strong and set a winning precident to start the season. In the month of April they will be facing The Yankees, Toronto, Tampa Bay, Baltimore and Texas. If the Sox have a slow month of April, they could quickly find themselves way behind in the standings heading into May, which is not going to be an easy month either.

Hopefully The Sox have learned a lesson from what happened to The Pats after their first Championship. Their 1st Championship... heh heh... yeeeaaah... Ooops! Where was I? Oh yeah, after the Pats won their 1st (of three!) Superbowls, they came out and went 9-7. They spent too much time thinking about 'last year' and not enough time focusing on 'this year'.

As hard as it is to let go of last year, that is what The Red Sox have to do. The opportunity is there for the taking tonight.

And you thought there was going to be a grace period for the Sox this year since they won The Series. WRONG.

I am curious to know what the fans at Yankee Stadium are going to do for chants tonight. They can't use '1918' anymore, they can't use 'Who's Your Daddy' anymore, what's left? Nothing. HA!

On a final note, lots of people look at last year's ALCS and refer to it as 'The Greatest Choke in Sports History'. Personally, I prefer to think of last year's ALCS vs The Yankees as 'The Greatest Comeback in Sports History'. See the difference?

GO SOX