Beloved bashers take a defensive stance

Think of it this way: If you gave up cake and beer for Lent, tonight you can celebrate the end of Lent with beer and peanuts.

The Sox have never opened at home on Easter (or at night), but nothing is sacred when the local teams are in season. The Celtics regularly play on Christmas and are home this afternoon against the mighty Cleveland Cavaliers. The Patriots will play at Detroit on Thanksgiving this year and played on Christmas Eve in Jacksonville in 2006. The Sox opened their home season on Good Friday in 2001 and ’03.

Secular holidays are similarly swallowed whole. Baseball games on Labor Day and the Fourth of July highlight the hardball calendar. And let’s not forget that Hub sports fans gathered at Fenway Jan. 1 for a festival of pucks and pageantry, celebrating regional hockey culture while reminding America that a little snow on the sidewalk can’t discourage Boston fans from their appointed rounds. Candidate Scott Brown made his Senatorial bones shaking hands in the cold outside Fenway on New Year’s Day.

Opening Day is baseball’s real New Year’s Day, and this 99th Fenway lid-lifter (one for every bottle of beer on the Wall) is one in which the home team will truly ring in the new. When the local nine takes the field, Sox fans can officially say hello to Mike Cameron, Adrian Beltre, and Marco Scutaro.

It’s not often that the Sox introduce three starting position players, especially after a 95-win season, but Theo Epstein’s 2009-10 harvest yielded a new center fielder, third baseman, and shortstop. Cameron is taking over in center for Jacoby Ellsbury, who has been shifted to left field to replace the departed Jason Bay.

Beltre is taking over third base for Mike Lowell, who is still here even though the Sox actually traded him to Texas in December (the trade was voided when Lowell showed up in Texas with a thumb injury that required surgery).

Scutaro comes to Boston from Toronto and is being asked to fill the black hole that has swallowed every Sox shortstop (Edgar Renteria? Julio Lugo?) since Nomar Garciaparra shot his way out of town in 2004.