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According to many fair-weather Red Sox fans, the loss of the first game may spell doom for the Boston team.

Out in the lost wilds of Texas, where longhorns are periodically turned into prime beef, the Red Sox were succulent morsels for the Texas Rangers.

Rounded up like the usual suspects, the team that only a week ago had fans humming 100 wins this season began to sink like the sun after a hot day into the Western sky.

Those who had picked Jon Lester to win the Cy Young Award questioned their folly as he gave up three home runs in his five innings of toil.  He didn’t pitch badly in a losing cause. He simply mislaid his pitches like Easter eggs.

Carl Crawford, savior from the Grapefruit ball clubs of Florida, began to look like another big gun brought in years ago. Alas, Houston home run king Roman Mejias never quite turned into the home-run hitting outfielder that the Sox had hoped for in 1963.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia, whose name is the longest for a Sox catcher since Pepper Jim Pagliaroni, lost track of his called pitches and began calling time out.

On a positive note, San Diego native Adrian Gonzalez began to look like San Diego native Ted Williams. Alas, Ted played on some fairly poor teams over the years.

David Ortiz slammed a late inning home run to tie the game, and it almost seemed like a stampede of Red Sox might steer the Texas team in the direction of defeat.

Alas, something was rotten in the dugout of the Red Sox.

Had my ears heard correctly, was Fat Albert warming up in the Red Sox bullpen?

No, it was Matt Albers. Phew, that was close.

Instead, the new Mighty Casey came to the mound, but alas he did not strike out the opponents, but only himself. Daniel Bard met the lions and they ate him up in a big gulp.

Cheer up, Sox fans. This losing streak cannot go much longer than 162 losses in a row.  It almost makes you yearn for the good old days of spring training. They never lost more than 10 in a row back then.

Blame it on April Fools.

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Out-of-court settlements are usually the fate of frivolous lawsuits.

Today, the lawyers for two tempests in a teapot settled their dispute about as amicably as warriors in the longstanding baseball feud involving the Red Sox and Yankees could.

Yes, Jay-Z of rap music and friendly fan of publicity had sued Big Papi of the friendly Red Sox Nation for copyright infringement.

Skeptics hinted that Jay-Z, a lifelong New York Yankees fan and among the most solvent of pinstripe patrons, had chosen a battle with Ortiz deliberately.

Ortiz, recently accepted as a naturalized American citizen, keeps his roots in the Dominican Republic fueled with business dealings. He had opened a restaurant in his native land and chose to call it the Forty-Forty Club.  Alas, the name 40/40 had already been legally adopted by the paternal Jay-Z for his own American enterprise purposes.

Jay-Z may have been upset by the scandal when a construction worker on the new Yankee Stadium had cursed the home team by burying a jersey with Ortiz’s number in concrete back in 2008. A bigger dig ensued than at the Boston tunnel scandal.  Conducting an excavation ceremony at the new Yankee home, Ortiz’s Red Sox shirt caused delays and uproar as the jackhammers released the evil spirit.

Did this lead to the dispute between Ortiz and Jay-Z in April of 2010?

Big Papi Ortiz, an occasional patron of the Jay-Z nightclub in New York City, had been inspired to flatter the singer by imitating Jay-Z’s business acumen.

Alas, Yankee fans are never flattered when it comes to money. Jay-Z took Ortiz to court immediately when he tried to open his restaurant, namely based on a 40 home runs and 40 doubles he achieved in 2004 as his ideal.

Who owned the right to the name? Which event came first? Was it the chicken or the egg? The Federal court judge suggested both parties ought to stop wasting the time of the busy judicial system and have their high-paid mouthpieces come up with a solution.

They did so, announcing on March 28th that something akin to principles had allowed both sides to agree to sign off on the latest skirmish in the Yankee-Red Sox feud.

We expect Big Papi may not bring his dance shoes to the emporium of Jay-Z any time soon, and Jay-Z will likely not travel to the DR to eat up a storm off the menu at the Ortiz eatery.

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Mid-April of 2011 will mark the 35th anniversary of Mark Fydrich’s MLB debut with the Detroit Tigers, and it will also mark the second anniversary of his death.

A few years before Larry Bird became a well-known sports figure, Fydrich was “The Bird,” the one and only original.  Like Dizzy Dean, he had a brief and luminous stellar season, marred by a freak injury.

Few of the younger generation may recall the man who spoke volumes to the baseball when he pitched. He looked gangly, like some kind of ostrich or big-boned bird, and hence he quickly gained the nickname “The Bird.” 

Fydrich pitched for the Detroit Tigers during his best year, which happened to be his rookie season, in 1976.

It was the decade of wild attitudes among ballplayers. On the Red Sox you could find the other free-spirit pitcher, Bill Lee, who coined a group called the Buffalo Heads. Had Fydrich played with the Red Sox those years, he would have been one of the charter members.

Lee, whose moniker was “The Spaceman,” mentioned in his 2006 documentary, A Baseball Odyssey, that he often has been mistaken for Fydrich. They never played together. Fydrich sustained a baseball-ending injury, and he tried to come back with the Red Sox in 1981, but by then, The Spaceman had gone north to Montreal.

The two strangest ball players of their era were pitchers Lee (a lefty) and Fydrich (a right-hander).

In 1976, rookie Fydrich won 19 games and had an awesome ERA of 2.34. It was his antics, combined with his pitching, that won him cult status.

Fydrich’s teammates on the Tigers thought him an odd bird, and with Sesame Street’s Big Bird a hit on television, he found himself christened with an immortal tag. He and Big Bird appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in June of 1977, one of the most enduring and endearing SI covers.

During games, Fydrich often rejected baseballs, throwing them back to the umpire because they were clearly baseballs with “hit” written all over them. He performed rituals on the mound, including talking to the baseball.

Beating the Yankees on national television made him a celebrity that year. Cities with poor baseball attendance found themselves with sellout crowds if it were announced that “The Bird” was pitching that day.

Fydrich out-dueled Bert Blyleven, Dock Ellis, Gaylord Perry and Nolan Ryan during his outstanding year. He won Rookie of the Year for the American League, but lost out on the Cy Young Award to Jim Palmer.

The magical time did not last long. The next spring training, Fydrich tore cartilage in his knee. Weeks later, he tried pitching and found he may have twisted his delivery. He later said his arm simply went dead.  At 29, his baseball career was over, despite a few comeback attempts.

“The Bird” stayed in New England where he was born in Worcester, Mass. He owned a farm in nearby Northborough, married and started a family. For over 20 years he lived happily, his free spirit undamaged.

In April of 2009, a brutal accident with a dump truck on his farm ended his life and stole a baseball legend from us.

We pause today to think of “The Bird,” whom baseball misses greatly.

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If you want to know why the hobgoblins of 1989’s Field of Dreams refused to allow Ty Cobb to play ball on their ghostly field, you have only to re-watch the classic 1994 movie Cobb, starring the inimitable Tommy Lee Jones.

Alas, one was the lovely, tear-jerking movie that men loved to bawl about. The other was an antidote to sugarcoated cotton candy about life and death that Field of Dreams provided.

Cobb set many records as a player. In the film written and directed by Ron Shelton and based on Al Stump’s famous biography of the baseball anti-hero, Cobb manages to set a yardstick of records that cannot be touched by “the children who play baseball nowadays,” as Cobb states in the movie.

If you are ready to throw Barry Bonds to Michael Vick’s dogs, you ought to consider Cobb. Why hasn’t Pete Rose invoked the name? He may be afraid of the demonic spirits that would attach themselves to his already bad luck streak.

Yes, folks, Ty Cobb managed to crack the original top-10 list of record-setters.  In the Ron Shelton movie version of his life, the star of the Detroit Tigers breaks every one of the Ten Commandments. And, that is no easy feat.

Here they are:

X.  Bearing false witness is lying under oath. Here he beat Barry Bonds by a mile. He allegedly lied about the Black Sox scandal, setting up the baseball commissioner with the threat of blowing the lid of baseball fixes if the league pursued the idea of prosecuting him. 

IX. Oh, he coveted lots of things, but usually found a way to achieve them. One he detested was Babe Ruth’s home runs. “I’d hit those things if I had to,” he reports in the film.

VIII.  He not only coveted many wives and girlfriends, but he managed to bed Lolita Davidovitch in one racy scene. Marriage was not a sacrament to Cobb.

VII. Not only did he beat his wife in this film, his litany of being unfaithful drove her to seek divorce finally for his adultery.

VI.  Let’s face it. Any man who sets the record for stealing bases, and especially home, surely squeaks by with breaking this rule.

V. Did Cobb kill a person, committing murder? According to Shelton’s screenplay, he pistol-whipped a man to death in a back alley.

IV. Honoring his parents was undermined by his contempt for his mother. It may have resulted in Cobb being the trigger man in the bizarre and unsolved murder of his father. Someone in the old family home used a shotgun to dispatch the man.

III. Cursing at God is such a common sin, that some may find it hard to condemn it, but when Cobb curses God for making him an old drug addict, this is a piece of work in the history of curses.

II.  Back in the early days of baseball, many cities and town felt playing baseball on Sunday was a sacrilege. Of course, Cobb had no problems with a professional game (especially with all that money involved).

I. Cobb probably had a few false gods up his uniform sleeve. He put baseball ahead of all else, and his records were most important of all. Yet, in the years subsequent to his playing ball, he made tons of money playing ball in the stock market.  In his mind, everything paled next to the almighty dollar.

Perhaps some of these sins were a stretch even for Cobb, but the fact is the allegations against him make the crimes of Bonds, Vick, Rose and hundreds of others, seem like minor ethical lapses of judgment.

Next time you are ready to cast a stone at the latest folly of a modern athlete, you may well want to pay homage to the “greatest ballplayer of them all: Ty Cobb.”

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Yes, it is hard to believe, but the paparazzi/sportswriters who cover the Boston Red Sox have been unable to drum up decent controversy this spring.

The story lines are now falling into the “pathetic” category. Once again, a bunch of seasonal hacks raise the issue of Jonathan Papelbon being washed-up, or worse, wanting to escape the Red Sox.

A few have gone the route of trying to show that Hideki Okajima is riding a bubble ready to burst.

They beat the dead horse again with this tired bit: Where can we play the perennial All-Star Jed Lowrie?

Food Network may prepare a special on Dustin Pedroia’s favorite game-time snack.

A few diehards continue to worry about how Kevin Youkilis will handle switching back to third base this season, or why he always shaves his head, but not his chin.

Speculation is rampant about which of J.D. Drew’s fingers will draw the first hangnail of the spring, potentially putting him on the shelf for two weeks.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel, stories abound. For instance, we have learned that Adrian Gonzalez’s agent is a third cousin removed of Wade Boggs.

A couple of stories revealed that David Ortiz has cursed out those media-folks who wonder if his career will go into the hopper this season.

A few desperate, writing souls have clung like dogs to a bone to the head-bop that Josh Beckett experienced weeks ago, hinting that it may still be affecting his role in the rotation.

When a legitimate controversy entered the spring—namely the barbs passing between Ozzie Guillen and Bobby Jenks—Terry Francona put the matter to rest with a few choice words to both parties, and the only fun story of spring training withered on the vine.

The fact is that this is the most pedestrian group of Red Sox in modern history. Ah, for the days when 25 Red Sox used 25 different cabs to get to a ballpark on the road.

Theo Epstein and Francona have put together the most sober-minded players ever in the history of the Red Sox. Nowadays, they only play baseball, not silly games, in Boston.

You won’t see Manny Ramirez slugging a teammate, or hear that Babe Ruth has tossed a grand piano into the river, or that “Spaceman” Bill Lee thinks his manager is a gerbil.

We won’t hear that a couple of players have jumped the team and were seen heading to Israel.

We won’t have the star giving fans in the left-field stands a gesture of contempt. We won’t have a player refusing to fly on jets.

We certainly won’t see a disturbed Red Sox player climbing the net behind home plate.

Yes, fans, the good old days are gone.

It really leaves us nostalgic for the cellar-dwelling Red Sox, when Fenway Park had empty box seats and tabloid headlines made us giggle about “Dr. Strangeglove.”

Oh, well. Let’s play ball.

We will simply have to be happy with a World Series-caliber team.

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Craftsbury, Vermont, nestled in the forests of northern New England, is famous for two movies filmed on location: one film was made by Alfred Hitchcock, and the other stars Bill “Spaceman” Lee.

Alfred Hitchcock, The Master of Suspense who brought us Psycho and The Birds, went to Craftsbury in 1954. He was attracted to the rural small-town setting where for a few weeks in the autumn, the foliage and splash of colors roll over the hills for miles in every direction.

A self-styled eccentric and vagabond, Bill Lee came to Craftsbury after playing for the Montreal Expos. Still tiny, more of a village, it has a tad more than 1,000 residents today. It seems appropriate for a renegade of a conservative sports game to find solace in a land founded by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys.

Bill Lee, formerly of the Boston Red Sox, was dubbed the Spaceman for his otherworldly notions and antics. The southpaw won 17 games three times for Boston in the 1970s.

More people took a shot at Bill Lee during his career than suspects who murdered Harry in Hitchcock’s dark comedy classic, The Trouble with Harry, filmed in the wilds of Vermont.

Now Hitchcock’s Harry and Spaceman Bill Lee share the same geography.

Harry was a dead body who kept being buried and dug up by murder suspects. Bill Lee is a ballplayer who keeps coming back from retirement and pitching anew. Not too long ago, Lee pitched nearly six innings for the Brockton Rox, a professional team, and won the game at age 62.

Hitchcock did not want to film his movie in England where the original novella was set, and he scouted the settings of New England where quirky people might live. He thought Craftsbury was the perfect location for what might be called Space Cadets. Bill Lee would agree, and he moved there too.

To the shock of Hitchcock upon arrival at Craftsbury, the leaves of summer had already turned and fallen off trees in late September of 1954. Alfred Hitchcock, an auteur before his time, ordered set designers to glue the leaves back on the trees.

Bushels of more fallen leaves were collected and brought back to Hollywood for the studio production scenes. If Lee is the certified eccentric of baseball, Hitchcock won the title in the film industry.

Lee found the quirkiness that Hitchcock admired in northern Vermont and often plays ball, even into his 60s, near the Craftsbury Common that Hitchcock used as a backdrop in his movie.

Bill Lee lives the life of a freethinker and uses local timber to help produce baseball bats, much like the weapon Hitchcock used to kill Harry in his movie.

Lee disdained convention, and he was passed over by Don Zimmer, who could have used him to pitch against the Yankees in a pivotal playoff game. He is not a Zimmer fan, to say the least.

Hitchcock passed over Cary Grant for the lead role in his movie, and thus turned his little film into his greatest box-office failure. Hitchcock considered making a movie about baseball, featuring a crackpot who fills a baseball with explosives that ends up in the World Series. Alas, he never got around to making it.

Hitchcock, of course, did make a film about the apocalypse when birds beset mankind. Bill Lee contends that the spirit of his former boss, Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, now inhabits various birds that follow and torment him wherever he goes.

Bill Lee’s movie, A Baseball Odyssey, is available on DVD, with key scenes filmed in Craftsbury, Vermont. For that matter, so too is Hitchcock’s little-known masterpiece, The Trouble with Harry. 

This connection definitely makes Alfred Hitchcock and Bill Lee birds of a feather.

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It’s a sad day in baseball when humorists cannot find anything to chuckle about during Red Sox spring training. There is no laughing in baseball this season.

This year’s team is a sober group, unwilling to crack a joke along with the crack of their bats. Their breakfast is the cereal of champions.

Gone are the happy-go-lucky spring training camps where Manny was a week or two late, and Adrian Beltre and his noggin-rubbing of yore has become the stuff of folklore. Beckett’s unfortunate rendezvous with a baseball proved about as funny as a migraine.

A few years ago, the overgrown boys of summer were a bunch of idiots, but no longer. Nowadays, David Ortiz is focused, wary of any poor start that comes with Opening Day.  Why, even Jonathan Papelbon seems downright dull.

Controversies are at a premium. Oh, you can find Dustin Pedroia slipping out during a game to buy a few hot dogs, but that is nothing to relish.

Theo Epstein has pushed the mute button. He has nothing bad to say about anything, and even sits a few seats away from Brian Cashman in the stands, minding his own business.

Terry Francona’s press conferences are like chatting with people waiting in the checkout line at Wal-mart.

The crowds at the parks are at capacity. Fewer are texting or tweeting. It’s too pleasant sitting at Grapefruit League ballparks that resemble the bandboxes of 19th-century baseball.

The players who once offered us an opportunity to sharpen our rapier wit are now hard-working Puritans. Jason Varitek seems ready for this swan song with dignity. Jacoby Ellsbury never ribs us, and Carl Crawford is the poster boy for sports technology.

Adrian Gonzalez wants only to play at top capacity (like that other San Diego phenomenon who took the breath away from Boston fans), but Adrian is polite, kind-hearted, and pleasant, not like Teddy Ballgame of the temperamental mood. Don’t expect tantrums, curses or gestures.

What are we to make of a Boston team that offers no chance for irony, slapstick or farce? 

In the parlance of champions everywhere, the Red Sox this spring are a humorless juggernaut. The only smiles we will see during the forthcoming season will emerge strictly from satisfaction with a victory. And, that is no laughing matter. 

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With the alleged ghostly spirits that live at the 99-year-old Fenway Park, ghost-seeking fans may have plenty to spook them late in the night. Bumps in the Monster seats may be more scary when the Sox are on the road.

According to Baseball Hauntings by Mickey Bradley and Dan Gordon, there is a bit of action at Fenway Park. Among the alleged spirits to be found there on off-nights when the Sox are on road trips are the late announcer Sherm Feller and owner Tom Yawkey. 

Wouldn’t Ted Williams be there? Always mercilessly booed by fans at Fenway, might Babe Ruth relocate to Fenway now that old Yankee Stadium is gone?  And, what about Tony Conigliaro, whose career started there with a home run and, in reality, ended there with a beanball to the face? He roamed the outfield with his brother Billy for 1969 and 1970. Benighted Tony C passed away at age 45 almost 30 years ago.

Night guards report hearing something akin to fans shouting down at players. In fact, fans have secretly and illegally had their ashes dispersed at the Park.  It is against all regulations and will be stopped by security guards. There are enough haunted memories at Fenway already.

Hey, Zak, Jayson, Nick, Grant: We need you!

Spirits and ghosts often become upset and more active when renovations and construction take place at their abode. If that’s the case, then wandering specters at Fenway must have their heads in their hands.

From the Monster seats atop the 37-foot wall, to café-style tables on the right field roof, Fenway Park has changed plenty in recent years. How are the old ghosts taking it? Night workers report they hear the crack of the bat as if a ball were being hit off the wall.

Two rivals ghost shows appear on television regularly, and they could remove our fears. As an occasional fan of old dead things, I learned neither ghost-busting team has ever visited Fenway Park to do some debunking.

The Travel Channel features Ghost Adventures, with Zak and Nick, with headquarters in Las Vegas. The SyFy Channel features Ghost Hunters, with Jayson and Grant, headquarters in Warwick, Rhode Island.

Ghost Hunters has a slight edge in the contest. They went to Cooperstown in 2010 and visited the Baseball Hall of Fame to try their luck with resident haunters. Yet, as close as they are, the Retro-Rooters have never made a trip up to Boston—so far.

With majestic Fenway about to turn 100 years old, time may be at hand to put an end to speculation. Curses may have been exorcised by winning two World Series championships in this decade, but are the old ghosts still part of the environs? We need verification.

So, this call now goes out to the two teams of paranormal researchers. Let’s see what you can debunk at Fenway, Grant and Jason! Let’s see what you uncover at the shadow of the Green Monster, Zak and Nick!

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How many kids will attend opening day game at Fenway Park for their first experience of a major league park? It could be 1,000 or even 2,000, and perhaps many more. It will be a dream-come-true for them.

The sharpness of every sense will be heightened for these kids who will recall every detail of this experience in decades to follow. Some will savor their sensory overload, rendered speechless and into a kind of paralysis for a while.

I had the opportunity to talk to several dozen people about their cherished memories of going to Fenway Park for the first time when they were at an impressionable age.

A first time visit to Fenway Park becomes the ultimate trip to a field of dreams. Most report that they were eight to twelve years old when dad, stepdad, or uncle, brought them to the experience of their young lives.

It is a rite of passage in ways that are subtle and powerful. One father gave his son the tickets to hold for one week prior to their trip. The responsibility of protecting them weighed heavily. His father said simply, “Don’t lose them.”

Nearly half of two dozen interviewed said their first game was a Red Sox versus Yankee game. The din and energy could be overwhelming at a game that notches up the intensity level beyond mere games of the season.

One boy, eight years old at the time, wearing his Red Sox hat and carrying his glove, was shocked to see hundreds of others in the same outfit, the same age, all in the same boat. Another confessed his father held his hand tighter than ever before or since as they went through the turnstiles.

Others couldn’t believe the players on their baseball cards were live, really playing, and so close them on the field.

Aromas of peanuts and popcorn dominate the memories, and a few youngsters suffer the indignity of having beer spilled on them by tipsy adults. Some sat in the old 600 Club, or the skyboxes, if dad’s company gave them tickets. One boy sat in the bleachers where his father said, “ The real fans are here.”

One girl said she didn’t care so much about the game, but savored the experience. Her father bought her a Red Sox T-shirt that she long ago outgrew, but keeps tucked away because of the sweet memories it provides.

Many others recall the Mini-Batting Helmet with the Red Sox logo from which they ate ice cream. Enterprising kids had the Sox players sign the plastic container.

One boy in a Yankee cap was at Fenway for a Yankee game, sitting near the third base visitor dugout. His aunt heard that George Steinbrenner was sitting next to the Yankee dugout, and she brought him over. Security stopped them and said, “No more autographs today from Mr. Steinbrenner.”

Grumpy old Steinbrenner looked over his shoulder at the boy and barked, “Yes, one more.”

The memories of a first game can be overwhelming. And, for a thousand more kids at Fenway Park on Opening Day, it will be the story of a lifetime. It’s definitely the field of dreams.

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