Well, that was fun.

In a game that had 1999′ written all over it, the overmatched, pitching-poor Boston Red Sox turned in an opening-night effort that wouldn’t have beaten any baseball team in New York.

Fordham, Cornell and Rensselaer Polytechnic, included.

Bambino’s Boys 9, Yawkey’s Yakkers 2. For 18 hours, at least, the Sox have ensured themselves the worst record in all of professional baseball.

Alright, so I’m panicking, and more than a little punchy after saying up ’till darned near midnight to watch that eminently predictable train wreck.

While I chomp a few chill pills, pop in my collector’s edition DVD and give Denis Leary the opportunity to convince me last October wasn’t a cruel dose of Hollywood blockbuster schlock, here are a few meditations to enhance the fellowship of the miserable:

• Win, lose or rainout, Major League Baseball’s scheduling Opening Day on Sunday night in one of its northernmost outposts is an affront to tradition, common sense and the presumed goal of having any fan base left to watch baseball in 25 years. Yeah, I know, it’s all about those green portraits of dead Caucasian dudes. Imagine that. Baseball embracing the root of all evil.

• Despite our first vision of the Boys of Summer being devoid of sunshine, this set-up at Yankee Stadium was favorable to other tactics The Commish could have employed in honoring his world champions. Opening up under the Teflon dome at Tropicana Field in Tampa-St. Pete, for instance. Or two games in Tokyo or Mexico City, followed by five days off.

• OK, I get the point. Jason Varitek is captain of the Red Sox. He’s the first Boston player to preside over Kangaroo Court and know all the triple-secret handshakes since that noted clubhouse teddy bear, Jim Rice. But something’s weird about that C’ on his shoulder blade being twice as big as the B’ on his hat. “The Scarlet Letter” was more subtle.

• True story: Before last season, for reasons nobody but my shrink could ever surmise, my two favorite big-league players not employed by the Red Sox were Doug Mientkiewicz and Jay Payton. Now Mientkiewicz has come and gone after helping the Sox score that blessed ring, not even stopping long enough to buy a vowel, while Payton opened defense of that title by driving in the first run of 2005. Wow. In light of this track record, I need to start being a closet fan of Albert Pujols, Miguel Tejada and Adrian Beltre.

• It’s early, but David Wells frightens me. Yes, I know, Wells doesn’t walk anybody, and he has great location. This is a problem when you’re a 41-year-old guy wearing an XXXL jersey bearing Babe Ruth’s number and your velocity wouldn’t scare a good Babe Ruth League hitter.

• But then, here’s one from the Grass Ain’t So Green On The Other Side of the Warning Track category. In my daily devouring of the agate page, I just discovered that Jose Lima, Jamie Moyer, Woody Williams, Livan Hernandez and Yankees reject Jon Lieber are Opening Day starters this season. No kidding. I’m sorry, but no game of birth certificate bingo will convince me that Moyer is a day under 55.

• Do Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz look like they spent November, December and January on the South Beach Diet? No? It’s only my eyes? Hey, I’m not trying to imply anything, anything at all. Jason Giambi and Ruben Sierra aren’t exactly filling out their uniforms these days, either.

• And the first guy apprehended by baseball’s new get-tough steroid policy is … Alex Sanchez? Yeah, the third-to-last guy on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ bench. There’s another opening-day outcome that was a dead lock. Please tell me you didn’t think the inaugural scapegoat would be somebody his own family could identify.

• Opening Night lost its luster so suddenly and stunningly that I found myself switching over and watching most of the second half of the Michigan State-Tennessee NCAA women’s basketball national semifinal. You might label this a sad betrayal, an abrupt, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately message to my team. No, I’ll tell you what’s sad: We’re so sports hero-deprived in Maine that the best thing we have going this week is a women’s basketball coach who hasn’t lived or worked here in five years.

• Doubtless it was a money-motivated move, too, but baseball’s best accomplishment among the extreme highs and lows of the Bud Selig regime is the weighted schedule. The Sox should play almost half their 162-game slate against those natural, geographic rivals New York, Baltimore, Toronto and, um, Tampa Bay. Here’s lobbying for another two dozen games against the D-Rays, come to think of it.

• But let’s not panic after one loss out of 19 scheduled showdowns against the Yankees, no matter one-sided. Lest we forget, Boston went 11-8 against the Bombers last season, and it still wasn’t enough to win the American League East. It’s a winning percentage of less than .667 against everyone else that’s going to put my television screen in danger if the World Series souvenir ball is within reach.

Not that I’m bitter, cynical, down-in-the-dumps or otherwise taking this 0-1 thing hard.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].