Okay, another baseball post. Spent five hours yesterday in 39 degree weather at Fenway Park for Red Sox opening day. Freezing cold, with a brisk wind. Looked like a football crowd, but Thursday was clear and bright, a break between the cold rain of Wednesday and today’s forecast of afternoon snow.
The Sox were losing 2-0 and in the bottom of the ninth but tied the game with hits by Betts, Benintendi and Bogaerts. They won in the 14th with a hit from Bradley. Sure there were other contributors (Ramirez was outstanding), and I have long been a critic of Bradley (how can you win the Series with a streaky .240 center fielder no matter how good his glove?), but the Four Bs are in fact the young core of the team for the future. It is a pleasure to see them field and hit and run.
The Sox know how to put on a show and opening day was no different, with four fighter jets ripping across the sky at the end of the National Anthem, and with Big Papi (standing on the mound with Aly Raisman to yell “play ball”) ripping off his Sox jersey to reveal a shirt the read in big letters “Woman Power.” How much fun is that!
Negatives: you need to be rich to see the Sox. Parking in my lot is $45, in many places $60. Beers $11 or more. Clam chowder on a cold day, if you stand in line, is $8.75 (more in the stands) and not even a bag of Westminster soup crackers (watch them dump that soup into the cauldron from those pre-heated plastic bags; guess what it costs the concession stand to serve up a cupful [if it is one dollar including the container I would be shocked]). Face price on a loge seat: $146 (I don’t know the price of a box seat as I only know millionaires and they cannot afford to sit there so I have no one to ask).
Hint to Sox management: don’t close all the food service places in the 8th inning, particularly when it is cold; an extra hour in April demands coffee, soup, hot chocolate, maybe chips or cookies. People were leaving because between the cold and the lack of sustenance it just wasn’t such a great extra hour.
The inconvenient truth yesterday was not global warming but, rather, it’s late April arrival here in Boston. But as the Manager pointed out to the press, playing baseball in cold weather is the team’s goal — it is chilly in October and November.