Lousy Opening Day

I had a lot of excitement going in to today's Opening Day of baseball. I work 2 jobs but am lucky enough to have off for both of them today. So that meant I was able to watch baseball throughout the whole day. My wife is a big baseball fan, and was excited as well. She also gets a little excited wishing that she was at a ballpark somewhere, so she had me pick up hotdogs for lunch as the afternoon games started.

So the hotdogs were consumed as the pre game shows were ending. I went with MASN for the Nationals pre game coverage for a bit, and MASN has room for a lot of improvement. The graphics, camera work, and on-air personalities are all below par. I guess that fits well with the Nationals stadium and roster.

The highlight of the Nationals game for me was seeing the 2 F-18s flyover the stadium on TV, and then heading outside to watch them fly over head a minute later. Living right up the Anacostia River I was pretty sure I would get to see them before they headed back to the airfield they came from. After that the game really wasn't worth watching. John Patterson, who is supposed to be the only decent starter for the Nats, was awful. Dontrelle Willis, who is fun to watch just like Ken Griffey Jr. was 15 years ago, pitched well for the Marlins. Throw in some great hitting from Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera, and this game soon became boring. I'm watching the Angels-Rangers game right now, and the commentators were commenting about how they can't imagine how many games the Nats could lose. Its exciting to have baseball back in DC, but ownership better make a huge effort to build a competitive team next offseason or the effect of having a new ballpark won't last long.

With a boring game on MASN, I watched a lot more of the D-Rays - Yankees game on ESPN. I was hoping Scott Kazmir would upstage Carl Pavano, but he just didn't have it today. The Yankees starting Pavano on opening day is a joke, but they still manage to pull out a win. I've been sick of the Yankees winning ways for a long time, but they are going on 9 years as AL East Champions. The last time anybody else finished in first place was 1997 when the O's went wire to wire. That has been way too long, and it pisses me off that they are so much weaker than before yet still better than anybody else in the division.

The focus of my day though was definitely the Orioles playing the Twins at 7. I didn't have high expectations for a win with Santana on the mound, but I was hoping for an upset. 4 runs in 6 innings against Santana was a great result for the offense, but unfortunately Erik Bedard let the O's down with a turly disappointing start. I know he will get it things together and have a great year, but its a downer not to have a good result on Opening Day. One of the great things about baseball though is that there isn't a lot of time to get down. There is usually a game the next day to give you new hope, and I'm hopeful that Daniel Cabrera will have a better day tommorow night than Boof Bonser. BOOF! This guy must not take anything seriously with a name like that.