It's Time To Play Ball!!!
Mood:  cool
Topic: Exhibition
The exhibition season is finally upon us! We had the usual mass movement of players from the draft and pre-season trading, all of which made things very interesting. All sorts of players, from HOFers to reserves, switched teams. Of course, even more trades are on tap-- Orix and the Cubbies just pulled one off as a matter of fact. Now we'll start to see how things will play out. Any predictions out there?

In any case, this looks to be another great season with a full slate of 24 owners, so I just want to wish everyone good luck--except when they play against the Bucs, of course!

Pitching?
Topic: Exhibition
The second game of this Tuneup Tournement was held in the stormy confines of Korakuen Kyujo. Rain delays of 12 & 75 minutes prolonged the contest. Mudville put their Japanese ace, Kazuhizu Inao (that's him over here), on the mound against Tokyo's Jiro Noguchi. It was a scoreless duel until the 6th when the Nine broke out for 3 runs in 3 batters. Lenny Dykstra singled, Bill Monroe doubled him home, and then Larry Walker sent one into the rainclouds. In the 8th the Giants* manufactured a run on a pinch-hit single by switch-hitter Yoshinori Hirose. The speedy Hirose challenged the arm of Ivan Rodriguez, and won second base. Hisanori Karita then bunted him over to third, where Tetsuharu Kawakami brought him in with a flyball to Joe Kelley in left. But that was all the scoring for either club, as Inao pitched 8 strong innings - 2K, 2W, 7H, 1ER. Tokyo sent 4 pitchers to the mound, they allowed 8 hits, struck out 3 and didn't allow a walk.

Perhaps all is not lost.

WJ Trade
Topic: Trades
How bad was it?

I honestly had Kinder as my #1 coveted pitcher, and Adams has been a stud in all my sims.

Pitching, Pitching, Pitching
Topic: Exhibition
Tokyo played a couple games against Mudville last night. Mama mia! The pitchers on both teams got tagged, but Tokyo's hurlers were hurlin', if'n ya catch my drift. 15-5 I think the first game's score was. Masaichi Kaneda pitched for Tokyo -- he of the most career wins in Nippon history. That's him over there. I think there was close to 35 hits in the game. I hope that was just pre-pre-season stiffness 'cause it'll be a loooong season if it's double-digit scores against my best pitchers.

Walter Johnson . . . hmmm . . .

Dizzy Dean! Walter Johnson!
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Trades
Whoa, Nellie! What's happening in Saint Louis?!? First the city gets a new franchise, the Stars, to start the 2006 season, and then the city gets another franchise in the Cardinals -- and they only had to have one stadium! What a sweet deal that is! Now the Stars are vaccuuming up all the pitchers in the league -- Dizzy Dean from the Cardinals, Walter "Big Train" Johnson from the Nationals (how could they get rid of the icon of Washington baseball?), and Kent Tekulve as well!

I'm tellin' ya . . . pitching is precious. Seems the owner of the Stars heard me talkin'.

Batter Up!
Now Playing: New Feature
I'm thinking perhaps an open blog where we all can post is a better alternative to the ezine we had last year -- or a good addition, at any rate. time constraints this year will limit my ability to publish an ezine of the scope we had last year, but a blog may be just the ticket.