On New Turf in Toronto
By Kevin Horn
Opening night in Toronto: the stadium has been refurbished, new scoreboards on the outfield walls, Jumbotron redone and FieldTurf instead of the ol' Astroturf. Everything in this stadium is described as NEW for the first three innings, including three separate close-ups of turf. The announcers felt the need to describe the fieldturf and what was different about it from regular turf. Is there a person in North America who doesn’t know the difference by now? That’s like telling me why batters use pine tar…..(for grip, I’ll spare you the embarassment). The outfield wall scoreboards are BRIGHT lime green — possibly the worst colour they could have picked, two or three balls are misplayed due to the inability of the fielders to see. That’s gotta change, or this park is going to have more gimmicks than Minute Maid. Although, as our announcers were kind enough to tell us, they are helpful for keeping in touch with his fantasy baseball team. Anyway, Slash from Gun N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver plays the both national anthems on his guitar. It was pretty sweet actually, but he has wearing a half Red Sox-half Blue Jays jersey. I realize he’s not from Toronto, but shouldn’t you have to wear the home team's jersey? Isn’t that a requirement for national anthems?
Then we get the Trailor Park Boys throwing out the first pitch after a predictably lame fake fight over the ball. I like the Trailor Park Boys (which is Canadian comedy, so none of you have heard of it,) and it’s funny, but let’s be serious, is Roberto Alomar not a ten-thousand-times better choice for this? No contest! Plus we got porn-type music during the introductions, which probably sent Slash into a headlong search for every girl over, I dunno….14?
When we get to the game, we get David "Burning" Bush against the man who went from a wannabe brother (with cornrows last year) to flowing blonde locks: Bronson Arroyo. Arroyo, the announcer says, was actually named after actor Charles Bronson…these are the types of things we need to learn on baseball cards as kids. Nothing special there, though Bush is like every other Blue Jay this year with loads of "potential". Boston got a lot of boos throughout this game however, much more than I expected. Manny took a lot in the first inning, I would have assumed all the fans were there to see Boston.
However, some bright spots from the first few innings include me convincing my roommate that the "c" on Varitek’s jersey stood for catcher so he could be better identified, and him not realizing until the 4th inning they were actually at re-furbished Skydome. Which brings up an interesting point, he thought it was stupid of them to change the name, but I said, if I had money to buy stadiums, damn right I would name them after myself, that’s sweet.
And, if the start of the Red Sox season was an episode of The Mole, would you be able to pick between David Wells, Matt Clement, Edgar Renteria, or Keith Foulke? Ignoring his seniority, I would have to pick Foulke because he cost them one game and almost cost them another tonight. He and Rivera have equal flammability levels right now, but nobody talks about Foulke.
Anyway, a pretty uneventful game until the bottom of the 9th with a few solo homers here and there. Brandon League managed to turn an inning-ending DP into a large throwing error. Lucky ball. Sometimes I wish I could order baseball games in Spanish just to make them sound more exciting. Sure I wouldn’t understand what was happening, but I could live without Bronson Arroyo tidbits and knowing that Red Sox interim manager Brad Mills was the guy that Nolan Ryan set the all-time strikeout record against. The bottom of the 9th hits and we get some mad Blue Jay hitting action, scoring two runs and getting a runner on third. Keith "It’s not my" Foulke then preceeds to load the bases, to pitch to Orlando Hudson. I promptly PROMISE my roommate I have tons of faith in Hudson and he will get the game-winning hit. So, in typical underachieving fashion, he grounds to second. Good game all around though, nice exciting conclusion and the Jays draw over 50,000 to a game for the first time since Joe Carter played there (and that’s a long time ago).
