It Was Just The First Game

But brother, was it butt ugly.

I was part of a huge crowd of Red Sox fans at Professor Thom's on Monday afternoon, and it was bigger than even I would have thought. The day got off to a good start, as Kevin Youkilis singled and David Ortiz doubled to put the Sox up, 1-0.

That ends the Red Sox highlights for the afternoon.

Curt Schilling clearly didn't have it today. He surrendered three singles to load the bases in the first, and then walked Ryan Shealy on a 3-2 pitch to tie the score. In the second, Kansas City took the lead, 2-1, and added three more in the fourth off of him.

Schilling was done after four innings, his shortest outing in nearly ten years. He clearly did not have good command of his pitches. He was catching too much of the middle of the plate, and wasn't fooling many Royals hitters.

The final was 7-1, but it wasn't all Schilling's fault. The Red Sox did next to nothing against Gil Meche after the first inning. Julio Lugo had a day to forget in his regular season debut with the Red Sox, striking out three times. But all the credit to Meche, as he pitched a very good game. But the Red Sox hitters looked lost today, and two runners were thrown out at second. (I like aggressive baseball, but both Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia were foolish in each attempt.)

This was one of those "garbage can" games. Toss it into the trash and get them on Wednesday night. It was just Game 1, with 161 more still to come. The Red Sox haven't fared well on Opening Day in recent years, and they've only won once on Day One since 2001.

Let's hope we see a better overall team effort on Wednesday than we did on Monday afternoon.