Getting to know Tyler O'Neill
SEATTLE - The unforgettable day of events Thursday morning started actually unfolding at breakfast with Triston Casas and Kutter Crawford.
The two Red Sox players were easing into their Opening Day when the Netflix documentary crew came up to them with a bit of information: Their teammate, Tyler O'Neill, could make Major League Baseball history later that night with a single home run.
The well-placed information worked when it came to building some potential drama. Casas and Crawford started talking about what be. If O'Neill hit one ball over fence in the Red Sox' season-opener at T-Mobile Park he would own the record for most consecutive Opening Days with a home run - making it five straight - breaking free of the pack of players he had tied a season ago.
Yogi Berra. Gary Carter. And Todd Hundley (who was the most-recent streak holder, having homer in the openers from 1994-97). O'Neill's pair of teammates started preaching it into existence over eggs and orange juice.
Twelve hours later, a ball was in O'Neill's locker, with the outfielder standing in front of it, energetically trying to capture the feelings of both a 6-4 win for his Red Sox over the Mariners, and his new lot in life the owner of a record that is going to be very, very, very difficult to break.
"I knew what was going on, for sure," said O'Neill, whose record-setting homer to right-center field came in the eighth inning and boosted the Sox' lead to two runs. "I just wanted to be patient up there. Get something over the plate that I could handle. That’s a good pitching staff Seattle has got. Just try and stay within myself and put a good swing on something I could handle and the results are the results."
And when asked how he keeps executing this Opening Day excellence, O'Neill added, "I don’t know. It has to be something to do with pregame ceremony or something. It’s fun. You always want to kick the season off with a bang. Fortunately, I have been able to do it a couple of times in a row now. Just having a lot of fun out there."
Opening Days usually have some sort of milestone or memory that separates it. If not for O'Neill's record, this one would have still had plenty. For the first time as manager, Alex Cora won an opener. ("I'm happy I could help," quipped O'Neill.) Brayan Bello looked the part of an ace, giving up two runs over five innings. And Rafael Devers set the tone for the season with a third-inning, two-run homer.
"(Expletive) better than 0-1," said a smiling Cora when asked how it felt to win the first game of a season in his sixth opportunity.
It was just a blueprint type of game for a Red Sox team that hadn't won a non-Covid-year opener since 2017.
"You guys have heard me talking about moving, right? We're moving. We're moving," Cora noted. "We’re turning the double play early in the game. Pablo (Reyes) played good second base when he came in and Tyler made the play, the kid (Ceddanne Rafaela) made the play in center field, contact play, we scored, stole a few bases. We could have stolen the plate at the end. That would have been awesome. But overall, I like what we've been doing the last three weeks play good baseball and get a W."
But, make no mistake about it, this was the Tyler O'Neill Game.
The frenetic energy of the more-than-muscular outfielder could be found even before the game. "I'm just visualizing," he had said in mid-conversation a few hours before first pitch. "It's always a big one."
That comment immediately led to the same reminder Casas and Crawford received earlier in the morning, which only amplified O'Neill's energy. "Oh, I know. I know," he said when the subject of hitting a historic home run came up.
Add in the fact that he had a legion of family and friends in attendance, with his hometown residing just three hours away, only added to the excitement. Sure, the bundle of tickets came at what O'Neill described as "a cost, for sure." But it was all worth it, and then some.
"I would come out here once or twice a year," he said of Seattle. "When I started playing baseball at 10 or 11 years old my parents would make a trip, bring me and my sister down here to watch a ballgame. It was only three hours from our house so it feels alike a hometown kid a little bit in this area. But I love playing in Seattle. I like the city a lot. I like the weather. Yeah, what a day."
All in all, it was quite a debut for both the 2024 Red Sox and their Canadian power-hitter. But Friday is Game 2, with Game 3 and 4 coming on Saturday and Sunday. Moving on.
Even for the euphoric O'Neill.
He does, after all, have a record to build on.
His last words upon leaving the postgame get-together with the media? "That's five ... and counting."