Who the Funk Is Karstens?

Awesome game last night. The first Sox-Yanks matchup of the season ended in an exciting comeback by the hometown boys from a 6-2 deficit to win it 7-6. The drama started in the bottom of the 8th. Ortiz and Manny got on 1st & 2nd; Drew moved them over with a grounder to 2nd. Lowell drove Ortiz in with a hit off Vizcaino, making it 6-3. With a couple men on and one out, Rivera came in to try to get five outs. Tek was having none of it, as he drove in a single to right and brought Manny home. Crisp came up and came around on a weak cutter from Rivera that went straight down the first base line and rattled around in the right field corner. Coco's triple cleared 2 more men from the bases, tying it up. The immortal Alex Cora then stepped up to the plate, and with the infield pulled in to try to stop Crisp going home, was able to hit a dying quail over Jeter's head for the go-ahead run.

Pap was unavailable for the save. It was up to Hideki Okajima (not much attention paid to his coming over what with the Matsuzaka fanfare) to get through the top of the Yanks' order. Jeter grounded out but Abreu walked, and the go-ahead run came to the plate in the form of red-hot A-Rod (3H, 2HR, 4RBI in the game). A-Rod got jammed up on a 3-2 count and hit a weak fly to Cora at short. Oki was able to fan the peerless Thompson for the save.

An awesome win - as exciting as April baseball can possibly get. I was close to packing it in in the top of the 8th, but stayed only because it was Sox-Yanks (and I really had nothing better to do). I was impressed with Okajima - looks like he's got a decent splitter. He didn't panic and got through a tough spot. Francona's postgame comments were funny. He said that when A-Rod came up they had the Japanese translator writing down all these phrases like, "This guy's a really good hitter" but Tito decided to let Okajima be instead of walking out to the mound. "He seemed to know what was going on," Francona said in reference to Okajima's knowledge of A-Rod's massive offensive juggernaut thus far this season.

This afternoon we've got Beckett going against Somedudenamed Karstens.

I like our chances.