It's been 17 years since I've been to a regular season Red Sox game. In the meantime I've seen Curt Shilling at Disney World, been to a Red Sox/Tigers Spring training game, watch and rejoiced while the Sox won two World Series and joined MLB online this past July to get a more regular fix now that's I live in Florida.

To those of you who are not into sports, how can I describe my anticipation of yesterday? Christmas eve for a young child comes to mind.

My daughter and I left fairly early. The game was at 7 and we were out of here around 3:30. It took us about an hour and a quarter to reach Tropicana Field. I really hate that ride. It's boring and when you reach Tampa you feel like you should almost be there but you're really not even that close. I hope they will eventually move the Rays to an area that's closer to the entire central Florida population.

The starting lineups were posted outside the Trop.



All the players I wanted to see were listed like Youk, Ellsbury, Papi and Pedroia. I was also thrilled to see that Lester was throwing.

When we got inside the Trop we found out that Elvis had not left the building.



Actually this guy was pretty good. I wonder though if he'll be back. He sang Sweet Caroline and the hundreds of Red Sox fans joined right in.

Were there hundreds of Red Sox fans there? Nope, probably more like thousands! The Trop resembled Fenway Park south.

We also stopped in to the Ted Williams museum.





They let the fans into the seating area around 5:30. We found our section and decended the stairs getting closer and closer to the field. Holy cow, we were wonderfully close... only 9 rows from the Sox dugout! The Red Sox were taking batting practice and I went all the way down to the edge of the field to watch and take pictures.

The view from our seats.









David Ortiz - Big Papi





Jason Bay

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