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Opening Day, the rest of the story
2008-03-31 09:39
by Bob Timmermann

The Red Sox, Athletics, Braves, and Nationals all have at least one game under their belts. Weather permitting, the other 26 teams start their seasons today. And this writer has the day off as it's a holiday (Cesar Chavez Day) in the state of California. And you work for the government.

So here's what's on tap for today (and do you need to ask which time zone?):

10:05 am - Kansas City (Gil Meche) at Detroit (Justin Verlander). Jim Leyland finds himself on the other end of a Florida fire sale. Will it work out for him?

10:05 am - Toronto (Roy Halladay) at New York (Chien-Ming Wang). Go visit Bronx Banter for the give and take. Try again tomorrow.

11:10 am - Arizona (Brandon Webb) at Cincinnati (Aaron Harang). At long last, our long national nightmare is over. There will be baseball played in the Queen City. I think I'm going to cry...

11:20 am - Milwaukee (Ben Sheets) at Chicago (Carlos Zambrano). Baseball's most "interesting" division has its top two teams square off.

12:05 pm - Washington (Matt Chico) at Philadelphia (Brett Myers). The NL East champs start the season against the team they played in Game 162. The Phillies already are down by 1/2 game in the standings, but they're even in the AILC.

12:05 pm - Tampa Bay (James Shields) at Baltimore (Jeremy Guthrie). At least one of the teams playing in this one has hope.

12:05 pm - Chicago (Mark Buehrle) at Cleveland (C.C. Sabathia). Ozzie Guillen claims that the White Sox are going to contend for the AL Central this year. Sabathia is 14-3 in his career against the White Sox.

1:10 pm - San Francisco (Barry Zito) at Los Angeles (Brad Penny). I believe there will be discussion over here.

1:10 pm - New York (Johan Santana) at Florida (Mark Hendrickson). The Mets finished up last year against the Marlins. It didn't go so well.

1:15 pm - Colorado (Jeff Francis) at St. Louis (Adam Wainwright). The Cardinals won the World Series in 2006. The Rockies played in the 2007 World Series. Just a reminder. At least they tried.

3:40 pm - Texas (Kevin Millwood) at Seattle (Erik Bedard). The AL West motto this year "Everybody's got a 1 in 4 chance of winning the division."

4:05 pm - Los Angeles (Jered Weaver) at Minnesota (Livan Hernandez). The Angels are taking applications for healthy pitchers. Livan Hernandez is not Johan Santana.

4:10 pm - Pittsburgh (Ian Snell) at Atlanta (Tom Glavine). There are just two active players in the majors who have played on a winning Pirates team: Tim Wakefield and Miguel Batista. One player from that team, Dennis Lamp, turns 56 later this year.

7:05 pm - Houston (Roy Oswalt) at San Diego (Jake Peavy). The scoreboard operator plans on pressing the "0" button on his keyboard a lot.

 

Comments
2008-03-31 09:55:14
1.   Xeifrank
Bob, by "government", I assume you mean state government, right? vr, Xei
2008-03-31 09:59:44
2.   Daniel Zappala
Interesting that you mention time zones. Just yesterday I was browsing through the schedules on the MLB site, looking at starting times for games today, and there were no time zones listed. It finally dawned on me that they are all listed in the local time zone where the game is being played -- but you have to know the time zone for every ballpark to calibrate to your own zone. The local time zone is not listed anywhere. Very confusing.
2008-03-31 10:11:12
3.   Humma Kavula
Wow, Mark Grudzielanek is still in baseball? I need to pay more attention.
2008-03-31 10:11:30
4.   Bob Timmermann
1
State government in California has a holiday and local governments mostly have a holiday. But schools are in session I believe.
2008-03-31 10:17:54
5.   Lexinthedena
P.U.S.D showes no Love to Cesar Chavez.
2008-03-31 10:27:26
6.   Bob Timmermann
In addition to watching baseball, I will honor Cesar Chavez by doing laundry and also going to the dry cleaners and the Post Office.
2008-03-31 10:28:42
7.   Woden325
At long last, our long national nightmare is over. There will be baseball played in the Queen City. I think I'm going to cry...
Still angling for the key to the city?
2008-03-31 10:54:18
8.   Bob Timmermann
Only a few more minutes until the Dusty Baker Era begins in Cincinnati!
2008-03-31 11:08:32
9.   Tom Meagher
My roommate works for the UC and so had Friday off and went on vacation. She told me not to worry about moving our car on Thursday night because the muni workers would have Friday off. This was not the case, and we're out $40.

The UC's have Chavez Day as an official holiday, but the students mostly don't notice because it's part of spring break.

2008-03-31 11:11:36
10.   Bob Timmermann
9
By UC, you better be talking about the Office of the President, or else here you have to say UC Berkeley or Berkeley.
2008-03-31 11:48:50
11.   Bob Timmermann
All of the Reds are wearing "41 Nuxhall" jerseys.
2008-03-31 11:54:15
12.   dianagramr
11

That's one way to confuse the opposition.

2008-03-31 11:56:06
13.   Humma Kavula
Opening Day in Cincinnati... a tradition unlike any other?
2008-03-31 11:58:42
14.   scareduck
I plan on celebrating Cesar Chavez day by buying lots of grapes.
2008-03-31 12:02:52
15.   dianagramr
The Brewers are batting Ben Sheets 8th in today's lineup. Oh goody .... more chances to get injured! :-(
2008-03-31 12:07:18
16.   Bob Timmermann
Ned Yost said that Jason Kendall would bat 9th, but if another catcher was starting, the pitcher would bat 9th.
2008-03-31 12:08:31
17.   Bob Timmermann
Justin Upton bats 8th for Arizona today. He likely will move up higher later in his career.
2008-03-31 12:14:55
18.   dianagramr
ewwww ..... one of the Reds TV broadcasters just said that they need to keep Byrnes off the bases because he just knows how to score runs

(head hits desk)

2008-03-31 12:45:45
19.   Bob Hendley
2 - The only mention I saw of time zones was to indicate that he wasn't providing them. He might want to indulge his international readers, including me, with such information. (After all, it is a world sport, and Japan is the reigning champion of the world).
2008-03-31 13:17:35
20.   Bob Timmermann
19
Check the upper right corner of this page.
2008-03-31 13:41:30
21.   Tom Meagher
10 - Actually UCSF, I'm on the other side of the bay now. I thought all the UC's had the same spring break, but I didn't look it up. I never worked for UC Berkeley, but I worked for a non-profit in Berkeley that used the same calendar as the University, so last year I worked M-Th when no students were around and got Friday off.

The Reds can commemorate the 16-year-old Nuxhall on opening day but won't call up Jay Bruce?

2008-03-31 14:15:54
22.   Bob Timmermann
I think the campuses breaks depend upon whether they use semesters or quarters.
2008-03-31 14:37:05
23.   Bob Hendley
20 - Sorry, thought that was just an advert of some sort. Thanks!
2008-03-31 14:44:35
24.   Tom Meagher
I think the spring break is shared among all the UC's at present. Riverside, UCLA, and UCSC all have the same break as Berkeley; it's between their winter and spring quarters, and a bit past the halfway point of Berkeley's semester. I would look up Davis and Irvine etc. but the Giants announcers are talking about bushes and palm trees; I am enthralled.
2008-03-31 17:06:47
25.   Sam DC
Hmmm . . . I bought grapes today just because I needed/wanted them. Which side am I on?
2008-03-31 17:18:38
26.   Bob Timmermann
You're a thug for JH Blair.
2008-03-31 19:53:13
27.   StolenMonkey86
Did anyone see what happened with Brian Roberts called out on batter interference at Camden Yards? What did he do that was interference?

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