HOPE LESS

Baseball started the weekend with that new-season smell still in force. There were loads of home openers on Friday; circumstance and pomp reigned in Boston, Denver, Sacramento. It remains reasonable to say it’s early yet, if a team is scuffling. 

A week with a 2-5 record in August is easy to dismiss if your team goes from 12 games over .500 to 9 games over. You’re not happy about it. A lot of stupid things probably played out on the field, but you’re still nine games over and you know it’ll turn around. So tell yourself it’s early. 

It is. 

Except in Colorado. 

Man, alive. 

The Rockies last year lost 119 games. They won 43. This qualifies as very bad. As with the unofficial state motto of Arkansas (“Thank God for Mississippi” -- it sounds classier in Latin), the Rockies are lucky the Chicago White Sox exist. The White Sox lost 121 in 2024. They also lost 101 games last year and 102 games in 2023. That’s miserable. The Rockies are partners in misery with their own three-year string of 100-plus losses. 

But a home opener is a home opener and hope remains plausible. 

Until you give up 7 runs before you even get up to bat. The Phillies bum-rushed the Rockies right up front and continued the assault, widening their lead to 8-0 immediately in the 2nd inning with a Bryce Harper homer. 

Jack Corrigan and Jerry Schemmel had a tough assignment on KOA. They came with extreme optimism. The Rockies put runners on first and third with one out. 

“There you go. Rockies have a chance to chip away here. Way to go Rocks,” Corrigan said. 

The inning ended without a run scoring. 

Help, or at least a distraction, arrived in the person of Colorado Governor Jared Polis. 

“It’s great to be here,” Polis said in the fourth. “It would be even greater if the score was closer.” 

Gubernatorial play-by-play

The gov brings no luck to the Rockies.

The governor did an inning of play-by-play. He did a creditable job of showing how good the guys in the booth perform. 

Earlier in the day the Red Sox opened the Fenway season with greater promise, even if the team’s record at the end of the weekend trailed the Rockies’ win tally. 

“If you love baseball you want to be here at the Hub of the baseball universe,” Will Flemming told the audience on WEEI. 

Fenway in its glory

Home opener in Boston from the booth.

He did not issue a dad-joke warning before unleashing this one about the Red Sox starter on Friday and everyone listening was smacked by this groaner. 

“We thought it would be a Gray day, but instead it’s Sonny,” Will F. said. “I’ve got to do better than that.” 

He welcomed Red Sox chair Tom Werner to the booth on a day they honored the 40-year anniversary of the 1986 team that went to the World Series and cut the hearts out of fans across New England. Since the post-2004 success of the Red Sox, fans have been freed to see the ‘86 club for the joy it was, not for the heartbreak it ended in. 

There was joy early and throughout for the faithful at Fenway. 

“Oh-two. Trying to strike first here. Pitch. Swing and a line drive to centerfield. Landing down for a hit. Mayer comes home and isn’t it perfect. Ceddanne, say hello to 2026.” 

The Red Sox won the home opener 5-2. 

My day ended with a late-night game with the Astros taking on the A’s for their home opener in Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park. There was a full boat of 12,410 paying customers. Capacity is 10,624 seats and close to 2,000 on the grassy knoll of the outfield. 

Ken Korach is in his 21st year calling A’s games. He is joined in the booth is Johnny Daskow, the erstwhile Voice of the Sacramento River Cats from 2001 to 2022 and now in his third year with the Athletics.  

The A’s put together a 6-run fourth inning to lead 10-1 over the ‘Stros, a lead Sacramento held for a 11-4 victory. The ballpark was rocking to start off its homestand. 

The Big Amish

Get your tickets now for the Nick Kurtz Bobblehead Night April 17 in Sacramento.

Even the homeless A’s can put on a show. Fans have got something to look forward to, more even than the Nick Kurtz bobblehead giveaway on April 17 against the White Sox.  

Now starts the long march of the season with the excitement generated only by action on the field.