DoolittleBrothers

What is Dustin Pedroia thinking? You can’t run on Ross Gload. I mean, come on. He’s got a cannon out there. Nice easy inning for Meche. Too quick for good bloggin’.

Now here’s Fred with the Royals scoreboard show:

The Yankees battered the Tampa Bay bullpen for six runs and beat the Devil Rays 9-5. That has to warm your heart. Elijah Dukes hit his first career homer for the Rays.

Edgar Renteria homered twice, including the game-winner in the 10th as the Braves beat the Phillies 5-3.

The Indians pounded White Sox starter Jose Contreras like a doomstruck little ___bag. That’s my Hunter Thompson homage for the day. That game’s not over.

Bottom of the second

Hey, a triple from Tony Pena, Jr. I’m supposed to tilde that name but I don’t know how tilde with Word Press. Good for Tony. He still can’t hit.

Hey, the Royals grab the lead. David DeJesus had a terrible at-bat, striking out on three called fastballs and I was thinking this was turning into a too-many-ducks-left-on-the-pond scenario. But Mark Grudzielanekd picks him up with a two-out hit. Schilling is already over 50 pitches and, remember, the Boston bullpen — aside from the closer — is a question mark.

Red Sox starter Curt Schilling is a fellow blogger. If he was really dedicated, however, he’d be posting between innings.

My over/under for the Royals is 69 wins. Before you poo-poo that or call me a killjoy, consider that 69 wins would be a 13 win improvement over 2005. That’s pretty significant. I also expect that with the number of players they have in the organization on the upswing that expectation will increase heading into ‘08.

Bases loaded for Alex Gordon’s first at-bat. This is huge…Well, not the result you’d like. But it wasn’t a terrible at-bat. He spoiled a couple of splitters down 0-2 and had some good swings. The best pitch he probably got to hit was the first pitch fastball that he took. But that’s the downside of patience. I’ll take that approach in the long run.

First run of the year – bases loaded walk to Ryan Shealy. Excellent at-bat. The Royals are really putting the screws to Schilling this inning. Very nice.

Tied at one through one.

Meche was leaving the ball up in the first and the Red Sox took advantage. He threw a real nice change to David Ortiz but with his fastball up, couldn’t get make the out pitch. First inning jitters, perhaps. The knock on Meche has always been wavering consistency.

Now, I realize that Meche is the Royals number one starter and everyone is hoping he’ll turn into the ace the Royals have lacked. But when people ask me what to expect from Meche, I say that his three-year ERA is 4.82. Until he proves otherwise, that is what you should expect.

Nice pitch to strikeout Lowell. And, hey, if that is your husband or father or brother or freind who schlubbed around with that foul pop and kept John Buck from catching it, ring him up on the cellie and tell him to get out of the way next time. It’s only a ball.

REO Speedwagon again. As best as I can tell, these Opening Day national anthem gigs are about the only work these guys can get these days. I’m surprised I didn’t see them on the Amtrak this morning. I could see walking into that crappy station in downtown St. Louis and seeing REO Speedwagon sacked out on the floor sleeping on tattered duffle bags. In St. Louis last night, just at that moment when the crowd gets quiet to listen to the national anthem, a girl yelled, “I love you REO Speedwagon. And I’m going to keep on loving you!” I thought that was nice.

Really a nice pregame ceremony in St. Louis last night. The best moment came when they wheeled out Stan Musial. Stan the Man is getting up there and this is the first year when he had to come out with the help of a cart. But he still did that swing and it was pretty moving. That’s George Brett in 25 or 30 years.

Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter didn’t have very good stuff last night. He’d been working on a changeup during spring and as best as I could tell, the Mets were jumping all over it whenever he threw it. As bad as Carpenter’s line looked, he actually looked worse. The Mets were getting great swings on him pretty much all night, except for maybe the first four or five batters.

The Royals have taken the field. The Gil Meche era is about to begin!

Well, after way too many hours logged on Amtrak the last few days and about 14 or so hours since I walked out of Busch Stadium (where I covered the Cardinals-Mets opener), I’m back in Kansas City and looking forward to enjoying the rest of opening day.

Today, I’ll be posting observations on the Royals’ opener starting, well, now. I’ll certainly mix in my thoughts on other games as well. DooBros welcomes those viewers coming our way via kansascity.com.

The wait is almost over. No more pontification about Gil Meche, Tony Pena or anybody else, at least for a few hours. Real baseball is here folks. I’ve been up since 4 a.m., haven’t had more than five hours of sleep in several days, no decent (and healthy) food in about that long. But I feel fresh as a daisy. Look outside – it’s an amazing day for an opener.