Opening Day Adventures: White Sox vs. Indians (4/1/2011)

For those who don’t already know, I spent Opening Day weekend in Ohio with my buddy Clint from Diamond Hoggers, where we took in the Reds and White Sox opening day games.  As it turned out, both were two of the weekend’s most exciting games, as the Reds won with a dramatic Ramon Hernandez walk-off, and the White Sox hit the crap out of the ball and put up 15 runs.  Their bullpen implosion is a story I’ll save for another day, however.

When we arrived at Progressive Jacob’s Field, the White Sox were in the midst of batting practice.  Based upon how my boys were crushing the ball during BP, I should have known they were going to put up 15 runs.  Adam Dunn was effortlessly going 15-20 rows deep with each swing and even deposited one in the right field upper deck.  Clint was busy tweeting/texting and almost lost his life after a Dunn line drive skipped off the top of the wall and right past his melon. Alex Rios had the best ball flight of anyone on the team – his blasts were majestic and looked like they were still rising even after they cleared the fence.  I watched Edwin Jackson throw a knuckleball to an unsuspecting John Danks, who had the ball deflect off the palm of his glove and flush into his chest.  The best part: Danks was laughing harder than EJax after it happened.

Anyway, no more than 10 minutes after we got there, we had situated ourselves in the wide-open, right field bleachers, as the heart of the White Sox lineup took BP.  I ended up snagging a ball hit by A.J. Pierzynski a few minutes later, which marked the first time I ever had the balls to go after one barehanded.  After I threw in a dip and my heart finally stopped racing, I began texting all of my baseball buddies to brag about my souvenir.

In particular, my friend Joe – known aliases also include JoeDar, Dar, Sabrina, Jesse, Sloppy, Fat Hands, and Coach Dar – happens to work in a medical office in Chicago, and promptly wrote me a script for my excessive, post-catch hand pain. I should have asked whether my insurance covered it before indulging…

I’m happy to report that I’m currently pain free. Thanks, Doc Dar!