We took the opener! First step accomplished!

Truthfully, the score of this game should be 6-0, but Curtis Granderson hit a homer off of Brian Matusz in the 9th. Matusz was otherwise spotless and things went smoothly for the rest of the inning, but I admittedly wanted a shutout.

This win was truthfully a team effort tonight. Miguel Gonzalez pitched seven innings, holding the Yankees off the board as the Orioles scored and scored again. He got into a bit of trouble in the 6th and 7th, but he managed to fight his way out of it and keep the Yankees from scoring. On the offensive end, Mark Reynolds homered twice and J.J. Hardy once, with every starter except Nate McLouth and Omar Quintanilla having at least one hit on the evening. Everyone helped, and as a result everyone won. Except the Yankees, even though they did help us out by not being particularly offensively productive tonight.

Now, I think you all know what time it is…

Oh, a couple of notes:

• The Randy Wolf signing is official now. He’ll be one of the four players added to the roster in the first round of call-ups tomorrow.
• The other three? Xavier Avery, Steve Tolleson and Luis Exposito.
• Oh, and we’re going to be on TV on Thursday.

Before we talk about the game, let’s talk about some stuff that happened:

• Nolan Reimold went on the DL. Drat. At least Luis Exposito is going to get to make his major league debut at some point soon.
• The Orioles might be signing Miguel Tejada back. Oh, crap. I’m not sure what this will do unless he’s just coming here to retire. I really don’t think he has much left in the tank, and based on the Twitter reaction, the fanbase generally doesn’t think so, either.

I had to sit here and think about a relevant Top Gear clip to use for tonight’s game, and given that they’re in Massachusetts and people in Beacon Hill (a wealthy area of Boston) and Martha’s Vineyard are really rich and can afford nice cars, I went with this one.

WHY

Anyways, this game pretty much spent most of its time tied. The Orioles and the Red Sox stayed pretty level with each other, first keeping things 1-1, then 3-3, and eventually 4-4, which was the score when they took it into extra innings. Although Wei-Yin Chen didn’t record a quality start, he did manage to go five innings, which really isn’t bad considering that we know he’s tough and all that (remember his last start, when he took a shot to the crotch and kept pitching? Yeah).

This game was hell on me because I’m still recovering from a concussion. I was hoping my first real game back on the beat wouldn’t be so demanding, but it inevitably went into extras. In fact, it made it to the 13th. That was when the Orioles broke the tie – Matt Wieters singled, Wilson Betemit walked and Chris Davis squeaked a very lucky ball through the right side of the infield to bring Weets home. That was the first run in what felt like roughly five years. A sac fly put the team up 6-4.

Jim Johnson finally got a chance to pitch in the bottom of the 13th after getting up in the bullpen during various crucial points of the game. He shut the door very, very quickly. It was very nice after everything else was dragged out. At least somebody cares about my brain injury healing.

One more note before I close this post out: Luis Exposito made his Major League debut tonight! Congratulations, kid, you’ve made it! I’m very proud of you! (He looked pretty sharp on defense tonight, by the way.)

And now I will go rest my weary and sore head.

There’s not much else to talk about today – at least until game time – except for the fact that we have the fourth overall pick in the MLB Draft now, too, just like we did last year.

Anyways, the Orioles claimed frequent tweeter Luis Exposito, a catcher, from the Red Sox off waivers. Exposito, along with pitching prospect Michael Bowden, were DFA’ed to make some room on the Sox roster recently, and the Orioles snapped him up. As someone who’s spent plenty of time watching the Red Sox’s farm system, I can assure you that Expo’s a pretty good pickup. Good on you, Orioles.

To make room on the 40-man roster, the Orioles designated the prospect that wasn’t, Josh Bell, for assignment. It’s a sad story, really, because we all thought Josh Bell was going to be something special a few years ago. Sometimes things just don’t work out for anyone involved. Good luck, kid.