There were plenty of excuses for a bad day on Good Friday. The Sox had played 13 innings in Baltimore the night before, then got stalled on the tarmac at Baltimore- Washington International, and didn't trudge into their Fenway house until 7:30 a.m. Every relief pitcher was spent and sleepless.
Ellis Burks, who went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts, noticed that he was not booed.
"It was pretty calm out there, considering how I swung the bat," said the 39-year-old veteran, who managed to sleep a couple of hours in his curtainless apartment by putting a towel over his eyes. "I'm not going to hold on to it. I've been in this game long enough to know better."
Critics will wonder how a team can wind up using a position player on the mound in a three-run game in the ninth inning of the fifth game of the season. Tommy Heinsohn may love David McCarty, but having him pitch in the home opener was certainly not part of the offseason blueprint designed by Theo Epstein.
Young Theo, who was in junior high when Burks first played for the Red Sox, said that what happened yesterday "was really the product of [Thursday] night, and our injury situation. We knew coming in that there was only one path for victory for our bullpen and it backfired on us. It happens. It just usually doesn't happen this early. But I wouldn't overreact. We have seven guys on the disabled list and played 13 innings [Thursday] night. These are unusual circumstances."
Unusual, indeed. The only people who had a worse couple of days than the Red Sox were local weather forecasters, who predicted a cold, rainy day. New England's Doppler Gang had about as much success as Timlin, who coughed up a 5-4 lead, surrendering four hits and three earned runs in the disastrous eighth. We're beginning to wonder if perhaps Timlin (16.20 ERA) is the man most affected by Grady's brain lock in the eighth in the Bronx in October.
