That's right, Boilerdowd and other non-baseball fans, baseball got underway last night... err, or this morning, or whatever... with your World Champion Red Sox taking on the Oakland A's of Moneyball fame in Japan at 6 AM, Eastern Time, this morning.

The Sawx won it 6-5 in ten innings, with Fatsuzaka starting the game and promptly giving up a home run to the second batter, Mark Ellis.

More importantly, though, I thought Terry Francona was told not to wear his stupid-looking nightie anymore and that he had to wear a jersey top? Now, in addition to the top, MLB will have to keep a close eye on Terry Francona's feet, too, since he's apparently going to wear shower shoes while managing. I guess when you win two World Series in Boston, you begin to think you can do anything. Pretty soon we'll see him wearing boxer shorts and smoking a cigar while lying in an adirondack chair.


The Red Sox have become baseball's traveling circus... they play one more game that officially counts tomorrow morning in Japan, then come back to LA and play three meaningless exhibition games against the Dodgers (including one in the Coliseum, with weird-ass dimensions for baseball), and then re-start their season against the A's in Oakland. What does this do for pitching rotations? Who the hell knows?

I saw something today though that I hadn't even thought about. Because of the Sox winning the World Series last year, Terry Francona will be the AL manager in the All-Star Game this year, which is being played in Yankee Stadium in honor of the old ballpark's last year. That ought to be interesting.

More baseball preview info coming soon. I know you can't wait.