Ohtani’s still OK with Fenway
There was a baseball marathon on Marathon Monday.
The Red Sox and Angels needed 5 hours, 24 minutes to finish their game at Fenway Park thanks to two rain delays.
Hunter Renfroe — remember him? — homered and drove in four runs as the Angels left town with a 5-4 win and avoided a four-game sweep.
Call it karmic payback for the teams playing Sunday’s game in a snappy 1:57.
The usual 11:10 a.m. Patriots Day first pitch was delayed 56 minutes by rain. Then there was an 11-minute pause at the top of the second inning when a sudden downpour sent fans running for cover and the hard-working grounds crew running for rakes and bags of drying agent.
Shohei Ohtani took the raw New England weather in stride. He singled in the first inning and put on a red and blue Angels jacket when he reached first base.
That’s not something we’re used to seeing in Boston.
Unfortunately, there’s no known record of who the last pitcher was to wear a jacket while running the bases at Fenway Park. But it was likely in the 1975 World Series, the last the Red Sox played in without a designated hitter.
Bill Lee and the Reds’ Don Gullett had hits in Game 7. Maybe it was one of them. Luis Tiant definitely donned a jacket in Game 1.
The rain returned for a third time in the third inning and this delay lasted nearly 90 minutes.
After giving up a run over two innings, Ohtani was hoping to stay on the mound. Angels manager Phil Nevin took no chances with his ace and Ohtani stayed in the game only as the designated hitter. He was 2 for 5 and left Fenway with an .876 OPS and an 0.86 earned run average.
Ohtani didn’t fret the weather. But the early start time threw him off.
“More than the rain and all that, it’s just a really early game. Unheard of early,” he said via translator Ippei Mizuhara, who’s so famous he has his own Wikipedia page. “That was probably the hardest part.”
The good news?
He still likes Fenway.
“It’s one of my favorite parks, so I always look forward to pitching here,” Ohtani said.
“But the conditions didn’t allow me to have fun fully. Other than that I always look forward to pitching here.”
Hear that, Sox? Ohtani likes Fenway. Make it happen.
By the time the final delay ended, a crowd of several hundred shirtless bros had assembled in the center field bleachers. A few were spotted by the NESN cameras drinking beer out of their shoes. That’s a thing, apparently.
“There was a lot of crazy stuff going on back there,” Sox manager Alex Cora said. “I don’t get the shoe with the beer. That’s a new one for me.
But, hey, if they want to do it, good for the guys.”
The Delta Tau Chi meeting was broken up and play resumed. By then the crowd of 34,942 had dwindled to a hearty 10,000 or so. But they were noisy.
With the Sox down, 5-1, Kutter Crawford threw 6‚ innings of shutout relief to keep his team in the game. The Sox scored two runs in the sixth and another in the ninth.
The crowd buzzed with the tying and go-ahead runs on base with one out in the ninth. After being up, 3-0, in the count, Rob Refsynder struck out swinging at a Carlos Estévez fastball.
Then on a day so much attention was focused on Ohtani, Masataka Yoshida had a chance to be the hero. Estévez went after him with four four-seam fastballs high in the strike zone and Yoshida popped out to third.
Yoshida was 5 for 17 with five RBIs in his first four major league games. He is 3 for 26 with one RBI in the last eight but with only four strikeouts. The contact is there, not the production.
Ohtani and Yoshida aren’t scheduled to cross paths again until May 22 in Anaheim. By then, the Sox hope their new left fielder will be more comfortable in his new surroundings.