Opening Day 2012

Boxes full of balloons

And we’re off.

Opening Day was almost as big a mess as I remembered. Thanks in part to the attendance mob and in part to the fact that traffic can’t get directly from I-70 eastbound to the Blue Ridge Cutoff anymore, the traffic into the stadium was a colossal mess. We didn’t have a lot of terrible trouble, but it took awhile. Once past the gate, parking was also a problem. They let tailgaters sprawl all over everything, so we had to park on the grass at the periphery of our usual lot.

For the most part these problems are just a natural part of Opening Day. The facilities and the staff aren’t prepared for the mob that shows up, but as most of the other 80 home games won’t be so bad it’s easy enough to shrug this off and move on. The one thing I wish they’d police more closely is the tailgating thing. Many of these folks don’t seem to have tickets at all, which raises questions about how they manage to set up camp in the Reserved lot.

Entry hassles notwithstanding, it was great to be back out at the ballpark. The weather was great. It would have been cold if we’d been in the wind, but we weren’t in the wind. Once we got past the lot, the crowd inside was much smaller (see previous paragraph). And when we got to our seats, we got some really good news: the concession parked behind us this summer will be Sheridan’s. Farewell to Jose Pepper, its fryer heat and its vile hamburger reek!

And speaking of malodorous food, the hot dogs once again take a turn for the worse. Every year the price goes up and the dogs get smaller. By the end of the decade they’ll be charging $20 for a Vienna sausage on a Ritz cracker. Please note that I said “they’ll be charging” not “I’ll be paying.” One of my big resolutions for this season is to cut down or even entirely eliminate consumption of ballpark chow. A couple of dogs are okay as a first game tradition – even if they did smell like boiled ass and one looked like someone already took a bite out of it – but neither my stomach nor my wallet is going to tolerate an entire season of such crud.

The highlight of the whole experience happened before the game even started. For the benefit of anyone reading this other than the three of us, one of our great gripes about the pregame is the franchise’s tendency to put white folks with dubious charitable accomplishments in the Buck Seat, the red seat set aside to honor Buck O’Neil, whose spirit apparently lives at every Royals game. Vision of Buck as a haint floating around behind home plate and moaning “get this real estate developer who sometimes coaches Little League the hell out of my seat!”

But not today. Today it was John Mayberry. It was great to see Big John again and even greater to see the franchise give him some recognition. Back in the day, Amy’s grandpa managed to overcome his racism long enough to be a Mayberry fan, which alone is enough of an accomplishment to earn the man the seat of honor. Perhaps this portends better butts for the Buck Seat this season. It seems unlikely, but on Opening Day anything seems possible.

I missed a big chunk of the opening ceremonies thanks to a struggle with the stadium’s WiFi system (typical, and probably aggravated by the larger crowd) and the iScore software (more on that in a minute). I got to see the old timers take the basepaths. They weren’t introduced – or if they were it was only on the Jumbotron – but we managed to recognize a few of them. I also saw the player introductions, which were fun. It would probably get tedious if they did that before every game, but for the first game of the season it’s a nice way to get things rolling.

The flag and anthem were of course impossible to miss, the flag because it was one of those huge things that requires servicepersons from all branches to hold and the anthem because it was a jazz odyssey delivered by a soprano saxophone so atonal that it made “The Star Spangled Banner” sound like an explosion in a goose factory.

However, by the time they finally rolled around to the first pitch I was deep in the throes of techno-battle, which was a shame because George Brett threw to John Wathan. I’d seen them both in the dugout – thank you, binoculars – but I missed the pitch itself.

The iScore problem: the stupid thing wouldn’t load the current rosters or the starting lineups. I pay a premium price at the start of the season to be able to load lineups with the click of a button, and it wouldn’t f’ing work. Later back at the house I was able to dig through the developer’s web site and find where it buried the fix for the problem. But seriously, this is the sort of thing that wouldn’t have happened to begin with if the software had been more professionally written. And given that everyone who bought the $20 stat add-on last year and this year most likely had the exact same problem I had, the fix shouldn’t have been that hard to find.

To make a long story short – too late – no stats for this game and fingers crossed for Sunday.

The game itself was a bit on the dreadful side, and that’s treating it to some Opening Day charity. Luke Hochevar did his usual thing: pitching brilliantly except for that one inning where he coughs it up like a cat with a hairball. Sadly, in this case the big inning was the first. Cleveland scored seven runs, batting around and then some. Jarod Dyson missed a tricky catch in center, drawing a chorus of boos from an Opening Day crowd already frustrated by the rocky start. But really the inning could already have been over if Yuniesky Betancourt hadn’t missed a grounder he should have been able to stop.

So let’s get this out of the way right now: goddamn motherf’ing Yuniesky Betancourt. Why the hell did we re-acquire this defensive liability to begin with? And why oh why are we actually playing him in the field? He’s got a weak move to his left? Hell, this idiot has a weak just standing there. In the eighth he flubbed a soft bouncer hit straight at him. It didn’t amount to any more damage to the score, but it was particularly bitter coming right on the heels of an astounding throw from Moustakis to Hosmer from deep on the line at third to get the previous runner.

At this point in the season I have no idea who the Guy of the Year will be. I don’t even have any firm candidates in mind. But I’ve got a strong, early frontrunner for Goat of the Year.

Other than the disastrous start, Cleveland never put much together. Asdrubal Cabrera hit a solo homer in the top of the ninth, but otherwise they managed almost no offense at all. The Royals, on the other hand, continued their time-honored tradition of hitting well but failing to hit consistently. The guys managed to ground into no less than three double plays, and of course it’s hard to overcome a problem like that. None of them were spectacular defensive efforts on Cleveland’s part, either; indeed, they might have turned one or two more twin killings if not for flubbed balls. I don’t know about the spirit of Buck O’Neil, but the spirit of Mike Sweeney is apparently alive and well.

The gut-clenching moment of the game came on the last out of the top of the fourth when Santana hit a screaming line drive right into Hochevar. He was down for a disturbingly long time, and he needed help just to get off the field. The X-rays said “no fracture,” so maybe it’s nothing more than a bad bruise

The Play of the Game was Moustakas’s aforementioned throw.

Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our Royal dead.

Ready for another season