Ah, Opening Day. I hope you had as much fun as we did (full report at Ducksnorts). Beyond the thrill of a packed house at Petco Park watching Jake Peavy spin a shutout, here are a few items from Monday that caught my eye:

The Mets beat the Marlins, 7-2. The planet’s best pitcher against a Triple-A squad — who could’ve have anticipated such a result? Uh, everyone.
The Pittsburgh/Atlanta game was insane. The Pirates took a 9-4 lead into the bottom of the ninth, but the Braves tied. Then the Bucs jumped ahead in the 12th, 12-9, before allowing two runs …read more

We’ve got our staff predictions up at Hardball Times. I go into greater detail about Padres-specific items over at Ducksnorts.
At THT, I’ve gone with the popular pick except for AL West (I chose Mariners over Angels), AL Wild Card (Indians over Yankees), and NL Cy Young (Jake Peavy over Johan Santana — there’s my Padres bias kicking in because, hey, someone’s got to have a Padres bias).
I also have the Diamondbacks beating the Tigers in the World Series. We’ll see what happens…
How about you? Any predictions you’d care to share?

The Library of Congress has made a bunch of old baseball photographs available over at Flickr. The photo above is of Les Nunamaker, a catcher for the Red Sox, Yankees, Browns, and Indians from 1911 to 1922.
Nunamaker’s career line: .268/.332/.339. Among his 10 most comparable players are the excellently named Johnny Peacock and Clyde Kluttz, as well as “The Colonel,” Hall of Fame broadcaster Jerry Coleman.
This particular photo was taken in 1912. Little did Mr. Nunamaker realize that a century later, folks all over the world would be able to watch him playing catch on something called the Internet…

Man, I had way too much coffee this morning. You could get a contact high just reading this.
Enough about me, how about the Manager of the Year awards? The good news is, the voters got one of ‘em right. The other one? Eh, it’s defensible.
You liked Colorado’s Clint Hurdle and Cleveland’s Eric Wedge (as did I). Neither of those teams was expected to do as well as they did this season.
The Indians you could kind of see coming, but they play in MLB’s toughest division. Wedge was the clear choice here.
In the National League, things were a little trickier. Bob …read more

The Red Sox are back in the World Series. They rolled over Cleveland on Sunday night, 11-2. They outscored the Indians, 30-5, over the final three games of the ALCS, which is as good a definition of “domination” as I can find.
Ladies and gentleman, prepare for the insufferable. Ben Affleck has just become vaguely relevant again, and the world is a better place for it.

Uh-oh. The Red Sox aren’t going away.
You had to figure the Indians were hosed when the series returned to Fenway. On the one hand, they’ve never lost a postseason series to a team from Boston — they swept the Red Sox in three games in ‘95 and beat the Braves in six in the ‘48 World Series. On the other, the Indians historically haven’t had a lot of success in New England.
Game 7 starts at 5 p.m. PT on Sunday. Jake Westbrook and Daisuke Matsuzaka hook up in one final game to determine which of these teams advances to the …read more

Remember that thing I said yesterday about Josh Beckett? I believe my exact words were, “time for Beckett to pitch the game of his life.”
Heh. I suppose 11 strikeouts over eight innings qualifies.
Now we have a day off (on a Friday, so I can watch Stargate Atlantis in real time) before the series returns to Boston. That is a place the Indians did not want to go.
The good news is they’ve split in Fenway once before in this series. The bad news is, well, asking them to do that twice in the span of a 10 days might be a …read more

Yeah, the Indians beat the Red Sox.
Again.
My favorite part of the evening came when Manny Ramirez hit a solo home run in the sixth. Boston trailed in the series, 2-1, and in the game, 7-2, when he hit his blast. Dan Shaughnessy explains the rest:
Establishing that he is classless as well as clueless, Ramírez raised his hands at home plate and admired his shot even though the Sox trailed, 7-3.
See, stuff like that is almost enough to make me root for the Red Sox.
Almost.
Still, its nice to know that Ramirez enjoyed himself in Tuesday night’s loss. I’m sure his teammates …read more

Game 2 of the ALCS features Carmona and Schilling. This is a close call, but I’m going with the Indians because Carmona has better hair:
Carmona:

Schilling:

First pitch is at 5 p.m. PT.

In the only series that couldn’t be resolved in three games, the Yankees again play host to the Indians, who lead, two games to one. New York sends 19-game winner Chien-Ming Wang to the mound; Cleveland counters with veteran right-hander Paul Byrd.
With the Yankees, one can never shake the ominous feeling that they are just toying with their prey. Wang hasn’t faced the Indians this year; Byrd has faced the Yankees once — on August 11 at Cleveland — and I expect he’s doing everything he can to forget about that one.