You’d grin, too, if you were just one pitch away from a game-opening immaculate inning and feeling you were going to nail it right before throwing pitch nine.

Payton Tolle can do an awful lot more than hug opposing hitters up the baselines or send other reminders of legendary fun-haver Mark (The Bird) Fidrych. He can even pitch. Sometimes, he can even do things for his team that only a Hall of Famer could and did 24 years earlier.

Things such as the most immaculate intro since B.B. King’s crying guitar ushered “The Thrill is Gone” in.

The big, bearish lefthander chose Sunday afternoon in Fenway Park to stand and deliver. Against the top of the Royals’ order. Nine pitches. Three strikeouts. Two swinging strikes followed by a called strike on Nick Loftin. Three swinging strikes by Bobby Witt, Jr. One foul followed by two swinging strikes from Jac Caglianone.

Tolle didn’t get to hug Loftin, Witt, or Caglianone. He simply grinned after pitch number eight, then pumped his glove and his fist and went, “Whooaaaa!” after strike nine. Nobody complained. Especially not the Red Sox, since Tolle went from there to pitch five shutout innings scattering four hits. To the Red Sox, those are hugs that help mean successful pennant races.

But they don’t exactly mind their gregarious southpaw’s act, either. Neither do the opponents. So far.

The only previous immaculate inning to open a Red Sox start was Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez, who did it to fellow Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki (swinging strikeout) plus Mark McLemore (called strikeout) and Rubén Sierra (swinging strikeout) on 18 May 2002. The most recent immaculate Red Sox frame in any inning was Chris Sale to the Twins in the top of the third on 26 August 2021. The victims: Nick Gordon, Andrelton Simmons, and Rob Refsnyder, performing their own version of “It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing.”

The Red Sox won both those games, Martinez’s 4-1 and Sale’s 12-2. Tolle went from those first five to a slightly troublesome sixth: leadoff single (Witt), hit batsman (Caglianone), first and second and nobody out. Then: fly out to right (Salvador Perez) and back-to-back swinging strikeouts (Michael Massey and Matthew Lugo).

Didn’t seem to faze him. I can do this kinda stuff to ’em all through the picture, he seemed to say as he hopped off the mound. The Royals could have stepped into the batter’s box with bazookas, not bats, and Tolle would have indulged the hearty laugh. Then, he’d stuff a few fastballs down the tubes. With a cutter and a sinker now and then to break up the monotony.

All that with only one run to work with from his mates. More specifically, from Caleb Durbin,  who hit the first pitch he saw from Royals starter Nick Cameron over the Green Monster’s left center field side. You’d think a team averaging 4.4 runs a game playing an American League Central basement resident with a tragic number of four entering play Sunday could hand their most colourful pitcher a little bit more room to maneuver.

Oops. With Tolle finished after six shutout innings, the Royals now had a shot at the Red Sox bullpen. They opened against Erik Miller in the seventh with back-to-back inning-opening walks, a fielder’s choice making for an out at third the Royals challenged to no avail, and then Carter Jensen pinch hitting for Lofton and singling the run home against Garrett Whitlock.

Whitlock kept the damage to a single run when he got pinch-hitting Vinnie Pasquantino to fly out to deep enough center field for the side. Then the Red Sox got a crack at Craig Kimbrel, the veteran reliever. He once toiled for the Red Sox. His career then and since has been too much akin to the arsonist putting his own fires out. That’s a too sad decline for a guy who was one of the best relievers in the business, once.

Kimbrel spent the earlier part of the year with the Mets, before they released him to be picked up by the Rays—who released him, in turn, to be picked up by the Royals. His Royals stint thus far has actually been the best of the season and respectable in the bargain: a 3.27 ERA and a 3.01 fielding-independent pitching rate. The bad news: He’s given up ten hits in eleven innings’ work as a Royal, his walks/hits per inning pitched (WHIP) rate is a skating-near-thin-ice 1.27, and he sports a 3.3 walks-per-nine rate.

Entering a tie game to start the seventh, Kimbrel induced a leadoff fly out (Trevor Story) but walked Durbin and Nick Sogard back-to-back. Royals manager Matt Quartraro took no further chances. He pulled Kimbrel post haste and went to Connor Thomas. Double oops.

Thomas got rid of Andruw Monasterio with a punchout but Roman Anthony cashed Kimbrel’s errant chip, singling Durbin home to break the one-all tie. Thomas slid out of further trouble with another called punchout. But in the bottom of the eighth, Story slashed a two-run single. The score held for a 4-1 Red Sox win.

Shame, though, that Aroldis Chapman had to work the top of the ninth as if he was a late-career Kimbrel disciple. Putting out a small fire he set himself: back-to-back walks to open, then striking out the side. If we can’t discard the save rule just yet, perhaps we can call “no save” when you’re starting the ninth cold but setting your own fire from which to save your team?

None of which was enough to erase the joy of Tolle’s game-opening feat. Just the latest ode to joy from a pitcher whose mother’s guidance and memory inspired him to inscribe her favourite phrase for him (You’re so pretty) on one finger of his glove. If this keeps up, the Red Sox theme might become the wearing of the grin.