Opening Day!

Monday's probable lineups:

Red Sox       Rangers
Crisp CF      Wilkerson LF
Loretta 2B    Young SS
Ortiz DH      Teixeira 1B
Ramirez LF    Nevin DH
Nixon RF      Blalock 3B
Varitek C     Mench RF
Lowell 3B     Nix CF
Youkilis 1B   Barajas C
Gonzalez SS   Kinsler 2B
Schilling P   Millwood P

My Plan For 2006: Write a brief post at the end of each game (for comments on said game). Then, in the morning, after looking through the papers on the internets, I will put up a more lengthy post.

Tito likes the top of his order: "Coco, I think, has maybe a little bit more explosive speed than we thought. [Loretta is] going to be in a position where he's going to get a lot of fastballs. The infield's going to be covering [second]. You've got the two monsters hitting behind him."

Features on Crisp in the Courant and Herald ... Two stories on Josh Beckett from the Globe and Palm Beach Post

The Herald's baseball preview runs today and includes Tony Massarotti's looks at the Yankees and Blue Jays and Michael Silverman on amphetamines. ... Over at the New York Times, bitter and confused Yankee fan Murray Chass says JT Snow is our starting first baseman. ... Alan Schwarz on measuring fielding.

Both David Wells and Hee-Seop Choi (strained left hamstring) were put on the DL. While Julian Tavarez is serving his suspension, Boston has to play with only 24 players because a team cannot replace a suspended player.

A friend of mine, Tom Adelman, has a new book out: Black and Blue: The Golden Arm, the Robinson Boys, and the 1966 World Series That Stunned America. Here's what today's Globe says:

The key to the Orioles' triumph lay in their acquisition of Frank Robinson, though the still-segregated city of Baltimore scarcely deserved him. On the other hand, the Dodgers scarcely deserved their two pitching aces, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, who staged a two-man strike against the tightfisted Walter O'Malley. The book, which delivers good baseball action, ownerly perfidy, and social context, reminds us how far we are from the 1960s.

Adelman also wrote The Long Ball -- about the 1975 season and World Series.