Opening Day, 2011

Tigers 7, Blue Jays 0: This was a shocker. I watched the carnage unfold on my computer screen. Oddly enough, none of the Tigers' runs were all that surprising. They did, after all, come from Pena, Rodriguez, and White, who are all pretty good hitters. And even the best pitchers have bad days. No, the real shocker was that Jason Johnson shut down the Blue Jays like he did.

Royals 9, White Sox 7: You'll forgive me for having a bit of a regional bias here. In games that don't directly effect the Mariners, I'll root for the Royals. Plus, there's no way you could watch this game, or, really, the last year of baseball, and not love these guys. What they lack in talent they make up for in heart. Forgive the cliche, but there's not much else to explain what these guys do. They have a lot of confidence. And so, when I wrote this game off as "over" to one of my friends today in the eighth inning, I didn't realize how wrong I was.

Billy Koch came in. If you learn anything from watching Billy Koch, you know that when he enters a game, no lead is safe. So it went, as he entered a 7-3 game, and suddenly I became interested. Suddenly, it's 7-4, and Matt Stairs (the official pinch hitter of Mariner bloggers everywhere) pinch hits for Tony Graffanino. Not a bad move in itself, except that Stairs, a lefty, almost forces Ozzie Guillen to bring in his best reliever, Damaso Marte, to squash the rally.

So who does Tony Pena bring in to save the day? Mendy Lopez. And what does Mendy Lopez do? Hits a three run shot to tie the game! What planet is this? In a million years, did you ever see that one coming? The next one, everyone in the Kansas City metropolitan area saw coming a mile away. Carlos Beltran was going to jack this one.

Twins 7, Indians 4: Another great one. Twins were down 4-0, but rookie Joe Mauer started a couple rallies with a walk in the eighth and a base hit in the eleventh, and Shannon Stewart hit a three-run homer in the eleventh to win it for the Twins.