Happy Second Opening Day! The watching world got treated to Rays-Yankees from the Trop as the true start of the baseball season yesterday, but today kinda counts too. The Red Sox take on the Pittsburgh Pirates in a couple of hours which, by the way, is a weird team to play on Opening Day, right? Spring Training happened, but it’s over now and we don’t have to think about it again. The games count now, and for the next seven months or so you no longer have to choose between Chopped or Law and Order or Maybe I Should Read Because I Feel Guilty About How Much TV I Watch.
Because you’re reading this, you’re definitely just wasting time not doing your job, so here’s something to chew over and get irrationally angry about while you continue to not do that job. Here are the names of everyone on the 25-man Red Sox active roster, ranked by how cool their name sounds. Not all baseball writing is good.
1. Xander Bogaerts (obviously)
2. Mookie Betts (ed. note: arguably the best baseball name)
3. Heath Hembree
4. Robbie Ross Jr. (bonus points for being fun to say)
5. Sandy Leon
6. Pablo Sandoval
7. Eduardo Rodriguez
8. Andrew Benintendi
9. Mitch Moreland
10. Steve Selsky
11. Fernando Abad
12. Christian Vazquez
13. \o/
14. Jackie Bradley Jr.
15. Hanley Ramirez
16. Craig Kimbrel (also the hardest to say)
17. Dustin Pedroia
18. Rick Porcello
19. Chris Sale
Now just comes all the players with two first names:
20. Robbie Scott
21. Ben Taylor (!)
22. Joe Kelly
23. Steven Wright
24. Matt Barnes
Last. Chris Young