There were heaters in the dugout, Red Sox rookie second baseman Dustin Pedroia said. But even in 43-degree weather -- on a day when a brief appearance by the sun at Fenway Park drew one of the day's bigger ovations from the crowd of 35,847 -- pitcher Josh Beckett never gave the Sox a chance to feel the chill.
"It seems like we were out on defense for only five seconds," Pedroia said, "and then we were back out there hitting."
Even as the buildup for tonight's first encounter on US soil between The Monster (Daisuke Matsuzaka) and The Heavenly Talent (Ichiro Suzuki) threatens to knock the globe off its axis, Beckett did his own slicing and dicing of Ichiro and the rest of the Seattle Mariners in a 14-3 home opener so one-sided that Sox manager Terry Francona was pulling his regulars in the fifth inning yesterday.
While the Sox, who had 14 hits, scored in each of the first five innings to take a 13-1 lead against a Mariners team that looked as if it was still stuck in a snowdrift in Cleveland, Beckett pitched six 1-2-3 innings and retired 15 in a row after Kenji Johjima's single and Yuniesky Betancourt's double in the third. Those were Seattle's only hits in seven innings off the 26-year-old Texan, who stuck a K-K-K branding iron on Ichiro, whiffing him in all three of his at-bats.
That's a rarity for Ichiro. In 13 years of playing baseball on both sides of the Pacific, he has struck out in three consecutive at-bats only three times -- the other two times in Japan, once in 1994, his first season as a pro, and again in 1999, against Matsuzaka. Dice-K, who was an 18-year-old rookie at the time, was so moved by the experience, he proclaimed, "My confidence has become conviction," a saying that still resonates in Japan almost as much as Dick Williams's jaunty, "We'll win more than we lose," to foreshadow the 1967 Impossible Dream does here.
But on a day devoted to honoring Yaz and the other Dreamers 40 years after their improbable pennant run -- Reggie Smith briefly shared center field with Coco Crisp, who attended Reggie's baseball camp as a kid -- Beckett was typically subdued in victory. He didn't say anything that will one day wind up on the side of a coffee cup (certainly not in Japanese, which is how Dunkin' Donuts now advertises its goods on a billboard in Fenway Park).
But general manager Theo Epstein, who cast a $30 million vote of confidence in Beckett last summer while others were looking askance at the righthander's 5-plus ERA, had a ready answer for someone inquiring as to what most impressed him about yesterday's win.
"Beckett," said Epstein. "He was very under control, throwing strikes with all his pitches. He executed all the adjustments he talked about making this winter.
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