Poets like to spin yarns about spring. The daffodils proudly emerging from the soft dirt. The smell of April showers in the air.
For Red Sox Faithful, those first few days of spring smell like baseball.
The Sox’ home opener against the San Diego Padres is at Fenway on Friday, with the first pitch at 2:10 p.m. They’re facing off against former Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts.
The Red Sox are already six games — and five losses — into their season. Hopefully “Sweet Caroline” and the energy from the Faithful will give them the push they need to improve on their bottom-of-the-division performance so far this season.
Baseball fans have a well-earned reputation as purist cranks.
For Fenway’s finest, even little changes have stirred up angry fans. (Diehards may remember the uproar over the stadium’s call to bring in sugar-free ketchup a few years back. A call that’s been long overturned.)
The biggest change this year, though, is across the league.
Major League Baseball’s home plate umpires, until this season, have retained sole control over what’s a ball and what’s a strike.
No amount of slo-mo replays on the stadium jumbotrons could change a middle-of-the-strike-zone pitch from being counted as a ball. Coaches could challenge other calls, but when it came to whether a pitch was a ball or a strike, that was between the umpire and God.
But, now, change has come for America’s pastime. Pitchers, catchers and batters get to challenge an umpire’s call. (Signaled, might we add, with a charming pat on their own heads.)
So the question is, what do baseball fans hate more? Umpires calling a beautiful, just-inside ball a strike and messing with their team’s prospects? Or technology spurring on what most purist cranks hate the most: change?
“I’m kind of not used to it yet,” said Genevieve Jones of Watertown, a fan at Friday’s game. “I think it’s good. It seems like from what I’ve seen so far, it’s not delaying the game at all, which I thought was going to be a problem, but it looks like it’s not.
“I think this is going to fun to see how it shakes out,” she added.
Van Baburins of West Medford was outside the park Friday with his guitar and 12-year-old dog, JoJo, on Jersey Street outside of Fenway Park.
“I come every year to the Red Sox opening day with my guitar, play ‘Sweet Caroline,’ and baseball songs, ‘Take Me Out To the Ball Game,’” he said. “I’ve been coming with my guitar for at least a dozen years, maybe a little longer than that. I just walk around and play my music and try to make people happy — make myself happy.”
When asked if he is optimistic about the Red Sox this year, Baburins said he’s “not optimistic.”
“I just didn’t like some of the goings-on in the off-season,” he said. “I don’t know, I didn’t have a good feeling going in for whatever reason... yeah, opening day, it could be better, but it could be worse.”
GBH’s Craig LeMoult contributed reporting.
