Welcome to Opening Day!

I’m writing this as I watch the top half of the 7th inning of the Red Sox opening night game at Camden Yards in Baltimore. The Sox are down 3-1 as they come up to bat against Rodrigo Lopez, who relieved Sidney Ponson with two outs in the 6th. The Sox have left a ton of guys on base (2 in each of the last four innings). Pedro had a brutal second inning, giving up three runs on a combination of solid hits (including a bomb by Javy Lopez in his first at bat for the O’s) and some sloppy play. He settled down nicely since then, including a 1-2-3 6th inning.

Can someone tell me exactly when we became a “Nation”? Red Sox fans, that is. It used to be that we were just fans. Now we’re “Red Sox Nation”. I’ve heard Dan Shaughnessy of the Globe use the term for years, but it only seemed to really take off in the last 3 or 4 years. I even started to see Red Sox Nation T-shirts last season.

The O’s just scored another run off Timlin, making it 4-1 in the last of the 7th. Maybe Grady was right!

6-1 now. It doesn’t look good.

Make sure you check out this at http://www.hitforthecycle.com. This guy is riding his BICYCLE 11,000 miles over the next six months to visit every major league ballpark to raise money for the Jimmy Fund. It’s about 11,000 miles in total. I’m going to chip in a few bucks for him. I’ve always thought I was a little crazy for wanting to drive the route some day. Doing it on a bike is really insane! Good luck to him, though. I hope he makes it.

It’s 6-2 in the 8th as I end this. It’ll be interesting to hear the reaction on sports talk radio tomorrow. How many people are going to think that the sky is falling?