The Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays played an April Fool's Day joke on their fans yesterday - they played a game that seemed like anything but baseball. The 12-11 Toronto win was as long as the Boston Marathon, contained more strange and wild moves than a pro-wrestling match, and had a final score that resembled football.
Pedro Martinez, who was 3-0 with an ERA of 1.00 in his four previous Boston opening day starts, led the masquerade, looking more like knuckleballer Tim Wakefield than a former Cy Young award winner. The seven earned runs he gave up matched a career high, and he left the game in the fourth inning.
The game began with a flurry of scoring, as the teams scored 11 runs a piece over the first five innings. The Jays scrapped together eight runs off Pedro through a combination of walks and soft hits. The Sox, meanwhile, preferred to play longball. Solo homers by designated hitter Jose Offerman, Trot Nixon, and catcher Jason Varitek and a three-run shot by Tony Clark accounted for the bulk of their runs.
Though there was only one 1-2-3 half an inning (the bottom of the sixth), the score remained tied until the top of ninth. Toronto's Raul Mondesi walked, advanced to second on Carlos Delgado's single, and stole third. He came home on a sacrifice fly off the bat of Darrin Fletcher - a quiet way to score the winning run, considering how wild the first five innings were.
Toronto closer Kelvin Escobar got the win for the Blue Jays, while Sox closer Ugueth Urbina took the loss.
When the dust - and Toronto Manager Buck Martinez' blood pressure - settled, there were a total of 23 runs scored, 27 hits, 2 errors, 27 runners left on base, and one Toronto coach ejected during the game, which took 4.5 hours to play.
The real chaos came not in the scoring but in a bizarre play in the fourth inning. With Boston's Rey Sanchez on second, Johnny Damon hit a fly to centerfield, and Vernon Wells made a diving stab at it - which the third base umpire ruled as a catch and an out. Sanchez scurried back to second base but found Damon there as well. Damon bumped into Jay's second baseman Homer Bush, causing him to drop the ball. The second base umpire made a safe call, but it was not clear who it was directed to, and Sanchez left the base.
Bush, however, did not think to tag him, and Sanchez remained at second.
Meanwhile, Varitek tagged up at third and ran home, and the Jays came out to argue that he had tagged up early. The appeal was denied, and when third-base coach Cookie Rojas continued to argue with the umpires, he was ejected.
The run ended up making little difference, as the Jays tied the score in the next inning.
For the Red Sox it was more than just opening day. It was the start of a new era. Gone were general manager Dan Duquette, John Harrington, the Yawkee Trust, and the clubhouse tension that plagued the club last year. In came John Henry, manager Grady Little, and 17 new players. The members of the New England Patriots threw out the first pitch, - perhaps in a symbolic effort to transfer their winning aura to another Boston team.
And in the spirit of new beginnings, it was the Sox newcomers who made the most contributions in the game. Clark went 3-for-5 with three RBI, and Sanchez and centerfielder Johnny Damon each had RBI. Varitek, who sat out most of last season because of knee surgery, had a promising homecoming, as he had three hits in three at bats, including a home run in the second, and had two RBI.
