The illogical workings of a Boston mind

To any rational sort of human being, it was just one game. What's more, it was the first game out of 162. To a logical person of sound mind and body, it meant nothing. It was just a slip up, an opportunity to see what's wrong and improve, a chance to get the jitters out.

Of course, for Red Sox fans, reason and logic left town about 85 five years ago along with a fat man who drank too much and liked to pulverize the ever-loving crap out of baseballs.

So when Alan Embree came to the mound on Monday night to begin the new closer-by-committee era under the nauseating lights of Tropicana Field, and promptly gave up a two run blast to Terry Shumpert, we started to get a little bit nervous. But hey, isn't that what closer-by-committee is all about? If one of your closers comes in and has trouble, you can bail him out with another one.

Enter Chad Fox, a 32-year-old journeyman coming off of two elbow surgeries. Fox gets two outs, should have been three but Nomar couldn't turn the double play, and then gives up a three run shot to Carl Crawford (who now has an eye-popping total of three career home runs). Ballgame.

Not quite what we had imagined, especially after seven innings from Pedro that could only be described as Pedro-esque. It was an April Fool's day joke a day early. After all of the off-season talk about this new closer idea, about how it would be the next big thing, the bullpen couldn't possibly have blown a four run lead in the bottom of the ninth to the Devil Rays. Could it?

This was not just one game out of 162. This was a cruel and unusual joke on par with Chinese water torture and 7th Heaven marathons.

The season could not have started on a more sour note for the Red Sox. There is no other set of circumstances that would have been worse, short of God striking down Pedro, Nomar, and Manny in one fell swoop. Even if they had lost to the Yankees by about 25 runs it would have been better, because it would have been the Yankees, and deep down inside, everybody would have been expecting it.

But this was the Devil Rays. The worst of the worst. The lowest of the low. A bona-fide Triple A team with about 13 seconds of big league experience and a $15 million dollar payroll. That's less than what the Red Sox paid Manny Ramirez last season. Nobody blows a four-run ninth inning lead to the Devil Rays.

And things didn't get a whole lot better on day two. The Red Sox won of course, but that's secondary in this town when Bobby Howry gives up a game-tying two-run homer to Rey Ordonez, who has the power and plate presence of a Chicklet.

Any other town would just shake it off, chalk it up to bad luck and let it go. In Boston we'll chalk things up to bad luck all day long, but if there's one thing we won't do it's let things go. We'll sit around and talk about how much of an idiot this Epstein kid is for thinking that you can close a game with a committee and how it looks like it's going be another season down the crapper.

You might be able to convince other people that there are still 160 games left in the season and that nothing is over, by any stretch of the imagination, but not us. All we can see right now is Carl Crawford and Rey Ordonez, with their combined 12 career home runs sending all of our stupid closers on our stupid committee home with their tails between their legs.

It's amazing, but Red Sox fans are the most negatively optimistic people in the world. We will go into every single game utterly convinced that somehow, some way, the Red Sox will blow whatever chance they are lucky enough to get, and will lose the game in pathetic and heartbreakingly awful fashion, all the while knowing that this will finally be the year that the Sox win it all.

And the skepticism in every single game would be excessive if it hadn't been right for 85 consecutive years. Anybody would be a little miffed after almost a century of anguish. In a weird way, it's only logical that our brains are so illogical. Trying to understand how something can go wrong 85 times in a row is a lot like trying to comprehend the universe. It's almost not even worth trying.

So you'll have to pardon Red Sox nation for getting so worked up over these first few days of the season. You'll have to forgive the Herald when it prints headlines like "Wait until next year" after opening day games. We just don't know any better.

Yeah, there's a part of our brain that tells us things like the Angels started last season 6-14 and won the World Series, but things like that don't really matter in Boston. We know that there are still 160 games to go, and even though we're bound to lose every single one of them, we also know that come October, the Yankees will suck, and we'll be World Series champs.