April is the cruelest month — especially in Maine. Spring won’t break until mid May or even June, and we may be facing another snowstorm. Nonetheless, the baseball season officially got underway Sunday night and we can only hope that it brings milder temperatures.
Spring is perpetually belated in Maine, and the mud-caked, raw wind of the wait is savage.
For baseball fans in New England April is a time of pure anxiety and dread. Raw nerves awaken from the winter to the unknown of an impending season. There is never pure confidence on Yawkey Way.
The Red Sox nation is nervous this week. Will Nomar be injury prone? Is Pedro damaged goods? Will Manny remain aloof? Will Wakefield hold up? Will the Yankees run away with it?
I don’t think so. In fact, there is reason for hope in the Red Sox nation. The Yankees are clearly a strong team and will probably win the AL East by overpowering the mediocre teams that fill baseball’s disparate landscape. The playoffs however, can be a horse of a different color.
As currently comprised, they aren’t built to win in the playoffs. Post season success in baseball comes from lights out pitching. Last year, Josh Beckett carried the Marlins to the World Series crown. It was Schilling who beat the Yankees a few years back. That’s a good omen for the Red Sox, especially if Pedro holds up. They also, for the first time in too long, have a solid closer.
Pedro Martinez, even if he can only go six innings, is one of the league’s most dominant pitchers. Paired with Schilling, the Red Sox have a one two that the Yankees can’t counter. Derek Lowe is also strong, and Tim Wakefield deviled the Yankees last post season. This of course, depends on Pedro staying healthy and Wakefield staying in concert with the knuckle gods.
The bottom line, of course, is the Red Sox are much better than most baseball teams and will win upwards of 95 games if they take care of their business. The games against the Yankees, barring something extremely strange, will decide the division. The savagery begins April 16 in Boston.
That day, Red Sox fans, drunk on Patriot’s day revelry will get their first look at the New York Yankees. Though fierce, the Yanks have a key weakness.
The Yankee’s staff is rife with uncertainty. Mussina is on the down slope of his career and seems to be a repressed obsessive-compulsive. He looked thoroughly unraveled in his opening day start in Japan. Sure, the flight is long, but a raucous whiskey crazed Fenway crowd is much more frightening. I don’t trust him.
Kevin Brown looked impressive in his recent start but he’ll get hurt. His delivery is spastic and he will inevitably end up missing starts. That leaves Vasquez and Contreras, both pitchers with immense potential and good stuff.
The fate of the Yankees could in fact hinge on whether these two can anchor the staff. Vazquez unquestionably has good stuff but pitching in the Bronx can be intimidating.
Contreras, whose forkball can be debilitating, seems ripe to have a dominant season and needs to have one if the Yankees are going to have success. Pitching is everything in baseball, especially the post-season.
There is no question that both the Red Sox and Yankees got better in the off-season, and this year’s battle will be tightly contested. The rivalry is working itself into a mad frenzy and fans will be treated to several well-played contest of the course of the next seven months. As it mirrors the most important presidential election since 1960, the baseball season will represent a necessary diversion from the true madness. Not quite a paradox, the games will at least bring, people from across the political spectrum together to dispense pure rage in unison.
I have a feeling we are going to need baseball this summer and these games will not disappoint. The outcome of the great theater is unknown, but regardless it promises to be cathartic. What better to inspire the masses in the heart of the American Revolution than a Red Sox-Kerry double? It’s a long shot and I’m a Yankees fan, but who knows?
Craig Giammona can be contacted at [email protected]