Keller @ Large: Best Day Of The Year For Baseball Fans
BOSTON (CBS) - This is the best day of the year for true baseball fans, and for New England baseball fans (except for those fake New Englanders down Connecticut way who root for the Yankees), it's especially sweet.
This is the day in which all your seasonal dreams are possible, the Sox are undefeated and every sweet milestone of a New England spring and summer awaits – the first dangerous sunburn, the first bad clam, the first bad ice cube.
What else will this new baseball season hold?
Yes, since you asked, I will share my painfully-bad powers of prediction with you.
This first one is a gimme. If the Sox lose the opener Monday, the annual day off after opening day (known locally as the Solemn Day of Whining and Moaning) will be devoted to loud, apocalyptic forecasts of season-long doom.
By May Day, the fans will be in an uproar over how much we miss Big Papi's bat.
By Memorial Day, the clamor for him to un-retire will be in full boil.
The starting pitching will keep the Sox in it through this, especially Chris Sale, whose jersey will be worn to games by every fan under age 60 by September.
But there will be concern with the bullpen.
This will ease in July, when Jonathan Paplebon will decide to un-retire during a ceremony honoring the 2007 World Series-winning team.
The team will get hot, win the division, and sweep the Cubs in October.
You heard it here, first.
Play ball.
Listen to Jon's commentary:
