It wasn’t fun to play baseball on Thursday, at least not until the Sox finally found a way to dispatch the pesky Tampa Bay Rays.
BOSTON — After standing in the outfield for nearly four hours on a sunny, windy, 40-degree Opening Day at Fenway Park, Jackie Bradley Jr. was asked to assess some trying conditions.
So did the wind or cold get to the veteran center fielder faster? “D, all of the above,” Bradley said with a sigh.
Now in his fifth season roaming center field for the Red Sox, Bradley has dealt with some rough spring days before. He should be used to this, right? Wrong.
“We’ve been in Florida for how many days? We’re not used to this yet,” Bradley said. “I guess you could but we’re not used to it yet.”
It wasn’t fun to play baseball on Thursday, at least not until the Sox finally found a way to dispatch the pesky Tampa Bay Rays. It took 12 innings but Hanley Ramirez sent the stragglers who remained from a sellout crowd of 36,134 home happy when he cracked a walk-off single to right that scored Bradley and gave the Sox a 3-2 victory.
After beginning spring training in Fort Myers in mid-February, the Sox hadn’t left the Sunshine State until a late-night flight on Tuesday from Miami. The team began the regular season in the comfy confines of the Rays’ Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg and then spent a few more days near South Beach for two games with the Marlins.
The Red Sox headed north with a sparkling 5-1 record but the real baseball season started on this cold, sunny, windy New England spring day. Flipping that switch isn’t easy and won’t be until the thermometer can somehow find 50 degrees or so. The Sox players professed that they were ready for the elements, or at least that was their mindset. Bradley said when he arrived at the Fens around 10 a.m. it was 36 degrees “but at least the sun was out. You have to look at the bright side.”
Andrew Benintendi, a native of Ohio, insisted he was ready to go. “I’m going to go sweatshirt, hood — everything I’ve got,” he said.
Fans followed the same game plan. Out on Yawkey Way, Dave Goudreau of Seekonk and North Attleboro native John Cavanagh sipped a few beers and said they couldn’t wait to watch their very first Red Sox Opening Day game. The only other time they tried to enjoy New England’s hardball holiday was back in 1977 but things didn’t go well that day.
“It was Bill Campbell’s first game,” Cavanagh, 66, said of the ex-Sox reliever, “but we were shut out for tickets. We went to a good bar instead.”
These true, blue, hearty New Englanders eschewed the cozy confines of a Fenway watering hole this time around. They scored two bleacher seats from an on-line broker ($80 each) and prepared for a cold, crisp day in the sun.
“We’ve slept in the snow in Vermont. This is nothing,” Goudreau, 69, said. “I’m a skier so I have my hand warmers and toe warmers. I’ll be fine.”
For much of the game players on both teams looked as if they were wearing boxing gloves as they tried in vain to make any magic in the batter’s box. Starting pitchers David Price and Yonny Chirinos had their way from the mound. Price cruised through his seven innings as only one Ray advanced past second base. He allowed just three hits through his seven innings before handing the ball over to Carson Smith in a scoreless game.
That was the move that ended this pillow fight. Smith was the goat in a 6-4 loss to Tampa in the first game of the season last week. His results in the home opener were worse. This time he walked the leadoff man in the eighth inning and then gave up a deep shot by Matt Duffy to center field that just did sneak into the seats for home run and a 2-0 lead.
With their backs against the wall in the ninth, the Sox’ bats finally warmed up a bit. Tampa reliever Alex Colombe was awful and opened the door for a comeback. The Sox obliged and tied the game 2-2 on a Xander Bogaerts double. With two outs and the bases loaded, Bradley hit a grounder to second base and was barely nipped at first. After a 1:41 review that had the Fenway Faithful holding their breath, the out call stood.
“I was just waiting for the answer,” Bradley said. “If I was safe we win. If I wasn’t, we keep playing.”
So they kept playing. That may sound quaint in July but with the temps dipping to 39 degrees and the winds whipping away at 22 mph, more than two-thirds of the festive crowd headed to the exits in search of balmier climes. Those who remained stood, danced and jumped in place to keep warm.
By the time the 12th inning rolled around, the diehards who remained in the old ball yard were rewarded. Ramirez cracked his one-out single, Bradley raced home and the season’s first rendition of the Standells’ "Dirty Water" rocked the park.
Baseball is back. The Red Sox improved to 6-1, Price welcomed cheers from the Faithful, and the team will enjoy an off-day with awful weather in the forecast. All is right in the hardball world.