One game down, 161 more to go.  This morning (this evening in Japan), the Oakland A's lost to the Boston Red Sox 6 - 5 in 10 innings. 

Not a whole lot can be gathered from the first game other than Manny Ramirez now has a death grip on the RBI crown.  It's going to be hard to rip that away from him this season!

For the Athletics, Joe Blanton took the mound and threw 5 and 2/3 innings of mediocre baseball.  He doesn't do a whole lot of spectacular things on the mound, and I expect that will be the case this season.  I'm ok with that.  The rest of the pitching staff looked pretty good, well, except for Huston Street.  Alan Embree and Keith Foulke we pretty solid.  Oakland will need those two to be at their best this season.

The A's only managed 7 hits, but also drew 7 walks.  It is nice that the players are sticking with the plate patience after Spring Training.  Now they just have to do that the rest of the year. 

Daric Barton was 0-2 at the plate, but drew 3 walks and scored 2 runs.  Mark Ellis and Jack Hannahan provided the power today.  Both hit home runs.  Ellis hit a solo shot in the first and Hannahan connected for a two run shot in the 6th.  Bobby Crosby was 2-5 at the plate with an rbi and a run scored.  He seems to be healthy, so I hope he stays that way this season!

I mentioned earlier that Huston Street was unimpressive today.  He took the loss as he went 1 and 2/3 innings and gave up 3 runs on 3 hits (1 a home run), and 1 walk.  He also has earned his first blown save of the season.  Let's just keep that number at 1 for the rest of the season!

It was sort of nice waking up and watching a live baseball game while I got ready for work this morning, but I still have some beefs with baseball in Japan.  1)  Why do we need to go there to showcase our game?  Japan knows the game of baseball and they know the quality of their league and ours.  I think it is sort of disrespectful to go over there and play games when their season is also getting underway.  I have more thoughts on that, but I'll keep the rest of them to myself.  2)  Can the A's get some kind of publicity while they are there?  I know ESPN created "Red Sox Nation" (thanks Hank), but that doesn't mean I have to watch a story on every player, coach, staff member of their organization.  If ESPN wasn't satisfied with the match up, I'm sure they could have called Bud Selig up and had him switch it to the Red Sox and Yankees or perhaps a team like the Mariners since they have a pretty heavy Asian following.  But, I digress.

I am very excited for this season in baseball, I hope you are too!