Oof

So much for the Sox season opener. The only comfort I can draw from the 7-1 pounding Boston took yesterday from Kansas City is that I wasn't home to watch it on television. I knew that things couldn't possibly be good when I left work with the Sox up 1-0 and turned on the car radio almost an hour later to find that Curt Schilling was still trying to work his way out of the bottom of the first. He managed to squeak by that inning, only allowing one run to the Royals, but at the cost of burning about half of his pitch count in the process. And it was all downhill from there.

Of course it's silly to draw any conclusions whatsoever about the upcoming season from the first game, especially considering the recent Red Sox' dismal track record on the season opener (they're 1 for 7 now, and even lost their first game back in 2004 - to Baltimore, 2 to 7 - when they would later go on to win the World Series). But that being said, it was a little disconcerting to have Schilling struggle as much as he did on the mound yesterday. Our much-ballyhooed starting rotation only works if several hypotheticals come to pass: Josh Beckett's arm holding together, Daisuke Matsuzaka not crashing and burning in the translation from Japanese to American baseball, and Big Schill and Tim Wakefield having one good year left in them both.

That's a lot of "ifs" that the front office has banked on for 2007, and even if it's way too early to see if that was a foolish gamble on their part yesterday was a reminder that it was in fact a roll of the Dice(-K). Granted, riding this emotional rollercoaster for six-plus months is part of what makes baseball so much fun, but must we always start with the loop-de-loops so early in the season?