Opening day. A time of memories, revelry, and in this case, reminding yourself that, much like certain other activities, even bad baseball is better than no baseball at all.

The scoresheet will reflect that the Cubs beat the Astros on opening day. The full story will tell you that the Astros did just as much to beat themselves…

The great Harry Doyle once said that you can tell a lot about how the season is going to go from the first at-bat. Unfortunately, in this case, the first at-bat involved Roy leaving a fastball in the middle of the plate, belt high, to a guy with 49 – no, 50 – leadoff homers in his career.

Roy would continue to work in and out of trouble, assisted by some nice glovework on Matsui’s part. Matsui went 1-3 with a walk, which is a nice game for your leadoff guy, right? Only if you leave out the Glen Barker-level braincramp on the bases in the first, where Kaz was doubled off second on a fairly routine pop to right field, dismissing their first scoring chance in the first inning.

This would be the pattern of the game for the Astros:
– Second inning, Tejada out easily at 2b on a pitch that barely scooted away from Soto.
– Third inning, Pudge wastes a 1st and 3rd (w/ Bourn on 3rd), 1 out opportunity with a strikeout that said his bat is every bit as slow as you might have feared.
– Seventh inning, single-walk chases Zambrano, and PENCE?!?! greets Heilman by rolling over on a grounder to SS, 6-4-3, rally over.

Even so, the Astros went into the 9th with a reasonable 3-1 deficit. Coop chose to stick with Geary for a second inning, a not unreasonable call. However, Coop apparently chose to not have either of his lefties up, and thus Hoffpauir’s PH against Geary resulted in an RBI single to make it 4-1. Insignificant? Au contraire, mon frere.

The Astros put runners on 1st and 3rd after sharp singles (and some rough RF play by Bradley) from Tejada and Blum. Up comes PENCE?!?!, who hits a lazy SF to center,making it 4-2. Now, in a 4-2 game, you’re still playing for 2 runs, so it’s not like you’re going to test some questionable Cubbie D by putting Blum in motion or anything. Instead, you get Bourn and Smith going down easily while trying to deliver extra-base hits that they are not cut out to deliver.

Nonetheless… it’s good to have you back, guys. Wandy takes the mound to get them back to .500 tomorrow.