MLBeat

We are not counting last night's Atlanta victory over Philly as anything more than a glorified exhitbition that happened to count in the standings. Today is Opening Day.

First game: Reds hosting the Mets, Harang v. Santana.

First major radio advertiser: Bud Light, continuing the "Real Men of Genius" series. New installments in the form of "Mr. Rolling Cooler Cooler Roller" and "Mr. T-Shirt Cannon Inventor." Good to have them back; one does figure beer would be recession-proof. (Although let's not forget who owns the Budweiser monolith now. "America is not for sale, and neither is her beer.") I've always found the Real Men of Genius ads to be half a dash smarter than the usual beer commerical kitsch. Maybe it's because they play better on radio than TV.

First baserunning blunder: Edwin Encarnacion. Strayed too far off first on a liner to right that Ryan Church bobbled but still caught. Mental mistakes are supposed to be the perpetual thorn in Encarnacion's side, and here he is already playing into the caricature.

First run, first RBI, first home run: Daniel Murphy, top 5th off Harang. Reds play-by-play man Marty Brennaman calls him Dennis Murphy.

First pinch-hitter: Micah Owings, bottom fifth. Announcers rationalized that Dusty Baker was using Owings as their first pinch hitter to save his "good" pinch-hitters for the late innings. Left out of the discussion was the possibility of Owings actually being any "good" himself. Santana strikes him out swinging.

First reliever: Daniel Ray Herrera, top sixth. Promptly allows double to Luis Castillo, walks the pitcher Santana, walks Reyes on four to a chorus of boos.

"Definitely not the Herrera we saw all spring training."
"But as Dusty Baker said, once they put a second deck on the stadium everything changes."

Brief mound visit from Dick Pole, whereupon Herrera calms down and gets Murphy on an RBI groundout. But still he suffers the indignity of being removed mid-inning in his first appearance of 2009, and the Mets have widened the lead to 2-0.

[Over to Rockies at Diamondbacks, where our ace Brandon Webb is taking the hill. There follows half an hour of technical glitches, after which we find that only Spanish feeds are available. MLB Gameday Audio and I are still working out some kinks.]

Labels: cincinnati reds, new york mets, opening day