Beckett impressive in 1st

Anyone who cares about what happens to the Red Sox the next two months can breathe easy for now. Josh Beckett looked like himself in the first inning, striking out two (Joaquin Arias and Josh Hamilton) and getting a groundout. He threw 15 pitches, nine for strikes, and hit 93 and 94 consistently on the stadium radar gun.

Most impressive was his sequence to Hamilton. He pounded fastballs to get ahead, 0-2, then bounced a 78-m.p.h. curve about six feet in front of home plate. He came back with another curve that Hamilton dribbled away foul. He fired a 92-m.p.h. fastball just off the black that Hamilton, somehow, spit at. Beckett fired a 2-2, 94-m.p.h. fastball; fouled off again. He came back with the same pitch, this time at the knees and just hugging the outside corner.

In sum, Beckett absorbed a truly professional at-bat from one of the American League's best hitters, refused to yield and struck him out looking with a devastatingly accurate heater. Then he walked off the field, slo-o-owly, like any gunslinger from Spring, Texas, would.

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In slightly less important news, Brandon Boggs has replaced Marlon Byrd in left for the Rangers. Byrd was apparently hurt diving for Dustin Pedroia's eventual double in the first. And Mike Lowell just hit a sky-high solo home run to left off Kevin Millwood. 1-0, Red Sox lead after the top of the second.