This past weekend had a lot of good things coming out of the sports world. It was opening weekend for baseball. The Masters tournament took place and the NHL continued its blazing path to the postseason. I wanted to touch on all or most of those things in this post.
Starting with Baseball. After spending most of the winter not sure if there would even be a baseball season this year we were finally able to crack a beer, Eat some peanuts, Do the 7th inning stretch and watch some baseball. Opening weekend is always fun and interesting. There are new faces in new places and there is always some getting used to new line ups. With the extremely shortened spring training this year the first few weeks of the season should provide some steep learning curves. The Red Sox have come into the season with the same questions they typically have this time of year. What will the bullpen be able to do for them. I think this weekend was a decent indicator that they may not be the big issue everyone thinks. The starting pitching on the other hand that is a question. Just based on the limited watching i did over the weekend. Admittedly i was more tuned into the Masters. The Sox bullpen seemed to plug the holes left by the starters. Will that change as the season goes on? I'm certain it will. But for this opening series they looked like they can handle it. One other notable thing i noticed was the amount of Sox fans absolutely hitting the panic button on Trevor Story. The shiny new 100 million dollar second baseman went a sad 1-9 with a walk. The one hit being a double. The knock on him is having played the first part of his career in Colorado, Curve balls weren't a thing to him. Alas on the road he suffered from what i will call Pedro Cerrano syndrome. He cant hit the curve. That was evident this weekend as Yankee pitching just obliterated him with curve after curve and Story could not catch up to them. Hopefully he will spend some time in the cages as being at Fenway will be a drastic change from the thin air of Coors Field. Story did however look very comfortable at his new position of Second base. One of the questions about his signing was how would he react to being moved across the diamond to second. He handled the transition well making no errors. While Xander Bogerts did have one error at short. Some have said that with Story signing such a big deal this offseason to come to Boston that that could spell the end of Xander's time here. I think there is still a lot to be determined with that and for now the Red Sox and their fans should all be happy with the fact that they have 2 young talented players in the middle of their infield and that's often a luxury teams don't have. If both players hit as well as they have been known to then i think Sox fans might be in for a decent summer.
Thursday began the 86th Master Tournament from Augusta National Golf club. 91 players made up the field with 51 making the cut come Saturday. Now for those that know me this is the one golf tournament i will watch from start to finish. I love everything about it. The course, The stories, The challenge. Everything. One day i will hopefully be able to attend a day in person. There were many story lines from the weekend. For me the main one was Tiger Woods. 18 months ago he was involved in a horrific car crash. Doctor's told him he would probably never play competitive golf again and there was at the time a slight chance he wouldn't even walk right after. Fast forward to last Sunday. Tiger showed up to Augusta and took a practice round. He walked the course. Said he felt good after. He did another of these practice rounds on Tuesday. Again said he felt good. He announced Wednesday that he would play in the Masters. And play he did. He came out on Thursday and shot a 1 over 71. Unfortunately that is all the highlights i can tell you about. Tiger ended the weekend shooting a Career worst 78 at the Masters. Watching him over the tournament you could tell every step he took was giving him immense pain. When he would crouch down to read a green for a putt he was not getting near a low as he used to. It showed in his putts as he had 4-3 putts and 1-4 putt over the weekend. Something i can never remember him doing. After his final round he was asked how he felt and what the plan was going forward. He did commit to playing at ST Andrews for the British open as that is his all time favorite course but we also confirmed he will never be able to play a full time schedule again. What this means for the 5 time Masters Champion and former world number 1 golfer is that at this stage of his career he may only be more of a ticket grab then anything else. Which in my opinion is quite sad.
Rounding out my weekend of sports viewing was the continued race for the playoffs in the NHL. The Bruins had 2 very winnable games over the weekend and managed to only win 1. The powerplay is very much feeling the absence of David Pastrnak as it has now gone 0-16 since he has been out. If they hope to climb higher in the final standings they are going to need to figure out a way to supplement his production on the PP. I intend to have a more in depth playoff preview in a couple weeks once the field is set. But for now i will leave you with this. If the Bruins plan to make a dep run they are going to need a lot more from the third D pair and also one of the 2 goalies is going to have to finally emerge as the guy they can ride for 8 weeks in May and June.
I want to say thank you to everyone who reached out to me after reading my comeback post last week. weather you come here for a different view on sports that you don't hear on the radio or TV. Or if you come here to support me and my non sense i appreciate it. If ever there was a time for more people to find something to bring them together this would be it. Please share the blog page to your own Social media if you want. More followers means i can do more with everything.
Thank you all!
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