Opening Day 2013 from Don Kelley on Vimeo.

Opening Day at Fenway
What a great day. Sunny and 65, not a cloud in the sky. My new seats in the red section have substantially better legroom.

The players, new and old, line up on the foul line. Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia get the expected huge applause, as do Lester and Buchholz. Very big applause for John Farrell. Jackie Bradley Jr., who is not in the starting lineup, gets an impressive applause. The Jimmy Fund Chorus sings the National Anthem…perfectly. No improvisation, no taking five notes and three octaves to sing “brave.”

The game is great.
The Red Sox are in 1st place, the Yankees are in last place. Clay Buchholz throws 7 innings of shutout ball, only 3 hits and 8 K’s. Andrew Bailey has a 1-2-3- 8th.

Then what?
A week ago today, Opening Day in New York, the Boston Globe ran a story saying that the Red Sox were dropping “Sweet Caroline” and replacing it with “At Fenway” (what?) by Brian Evans (who? huh?). There was a quote from Neil Diamond who was very upset about this. I blogged about it. Got numerous comments, most saying that it was a Fenway tradition and didn’t like the change. One comment came from my daughter Caitlin Kelley, who lives in NYC but would never root for the Yankees. She said, “That’s weird. What do you think about the date?” It was last Monday, which was April 1st.

Middle of the 8th.
Nick Markakis flies out to Ellsbury for the 3rd out and we immediately hear…”Sweet Caroline.” Here’s the clip:

Sweet Caroline on Opening Day 2013

from Don Kelley on Vimeo.

So it turns out that we all got punk’d on April Fool’s Day. But today was a great day at the old ballpark.