Well, it's official! Tomorrow morning (or tonight, for those of us who won't get much sleep) at 3:05 AM, PT, baseball will officially open its season with your 2008 Oakland Athletics vs. the Boston Red Sox.
For me, this game comes hot on the heels of one of the most amazing live sports weekends of my life. If you were rooting for Stanford, UCLA, and the Golden State Warriors (and I was), you would be hard-pressed to conjure up three games in about thirty hours that would have been more exciting or meaningful than what took place in Los Angeles this weekend.
I'm told the round 32 NCAA games can be a crapshoot; you have the potential to see a truly amazing, fantastic game, or you can also witness a blowout. After Stanford's head coach decided to single-handedly handicap his team, I was prepared to witness Stanford getting blown out, and I was fully expecting a blowout in the game following; with UCLA winning by 20.
Obviously, neither of these things happened, and I was treated to two of the most amazing games back-to-back of the tournament so far, and it was icing on an already impressive cake when I got to see Stephen Jackson best Kobe in a shootout last night at Staples. What made it even better was the fact that I had scheduled all of these events with a Stanford/Warriors/Athletics fan, cumulating with tonight's A's game. This will be the only game I didn't see live, but we will try to recreate that feel on AN tonight.
The real question is: Will my charmed weekend extend to tonight? Will we be treated to another amazing Warriors/Lakers game while we're waiting for baseball to start? Will the season opener in Japan have a magical quality that sets the tone for another great season of A's baseball? Is that even possible?
I think that this Opening Day is good for baseball, good for Japan, and will be fun for all of us. And right now, at this very moment, at least for one more day, the A's are 0-0, and anything can happen. It's baseball, after all.
D. Matsuzaka (0-0, -.--), J. Blanton (0-0, -.--)
Lineups and a game thread will be posted at 3AM for those of you sacrificing a night of sleep for your 2008 Oakland Athletics. Here's to the first of 162. I hope it's a good one!
