Screw ’Em!
The best performance in the opening game by a Josh wasn’t turned in by Beckett but rather came from a five-year old boy flown up from Tennessee named Josh Sacco. Sacco’s recreation of Herb Brooks’s speech to the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team is a YouTube sensation. He was even summoned to Vancouver to fire up the 2010 men’s team before its final match against the Canadians. The Red Sox cottoned to Sacco’s exhortations better than the hockey players did, coming back twice to defeat the Yankees in their home opener at Fenway.
With unbridled gusto Sacco bellowed into the microphone, “I’m sick and tired hearing about what a great baseball team the Yankees have!” For five innings they were nauseatingly great: C.C. Sabathia kept the scoring to two runs, Jorge Posada and Curtis Granderson (in his first at bat as a Yankee) blasted back-to-back homers in the second, and Brett Gardner and Derek Jeter justified their slap-hitting tactics with RBI singles in the fourth.
The Bronx Bromides didn’t look so great in the seventh. Perhaps they were distressed by the sight of Steven Tyler’s reanimated cadaver wailing a tune that somewhat resembled “God Bless America.” Or maybe they were too preoccupied figuring out if Tyler’s girlfriend was younger than his daughter. Sufficiently distracted, feisty tyke Sacco took matters into his own hands and drilled a two-run longball over the left field wall to tie the game 7-7.
Oh, that was Dustin Pedroia.
After the equalizer Kevin Youkilis scraped the Monster for double off Chan Ho Park, who was pulled in favor of Damaso Marte. The lefty-lefty match-up fizzled when Marte uncorked a wild pitch to David Ortiz and Posada failed to snag a high fastball. Youkilis bustled over home plate for the go-ahead run without Ortiz’s bat touching the ball.
As Sacco roared: “Screw ’em!”
| Game 1: April 4, 2010 While newly-minted Yankee Curtis Granderson made a splash with a solo four-bagger, the Red Sox newcomers’ debuts were solid. Scott Schoeneweis cleaned up Josh Beckett’s fifth-inning mess by striking out Granderson with two out and two on. Adrian Beltre had a sacrifice fly in the second and knocked in the first tying run with an RBI single in the sixth. Mike Cameron walked once, singled twice, and was the recipient of the first blown call of the 2010 season: the center fielder was called out by Angel Hernandez when he strayed too far from first base on Marco Scutaro’s line out to third. Scutaro had the same line as Cameron but knocked in a run in the fifth. | |||
| Yankees | 7 | BS: David Robertson (1) BS, L: Chan Ho Park (1, 0-1) | 0-1 |
 Red Sox | 9 | W: Hideki Okajima (1-0) H: Daniel Bard (1) S: Jonathan Papelbon (1) | 1-0 |
