This past Saturday was the start of baseball spring training games in Florida and Arizona, and I was able to catch the first Chicago White Sox broadcast of the year from Camelback Ranch in Glendale Arizona, seen in the photograph on the left, on MLB.com. The White Sox were widely expected to win their division last year, but struggled to finish at exactly .500, ending up 11 games behind Cleveland. This year they lost all-star first baseman Jose Abreu to free agency, and their closer, Liam Hendricks, is out until further notice as he battles Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. And so it is up in the air what they will do this season. But it spring training, after all, and so as usual, hope springs eternal. Even for all those poor Cubs fans.
Happily, Steve Stone and Jason Benetti, seen in the photograph on the right, are back in the broadcast booth this year and are already in mid-season form. Much of their discussion on Saturday concerned the new 20-second pitch clock, which has been instituted to help speed up the game, and it actually seems to be working. Saturday's White Sox game lasted only 2 1/2 hours, and the results were similar for the other teams playing that day. My favorite team is, of course, my South Side Chicago heroes, but since I live in Denver now, when I attend a baseball game, it is to see the Colorado Rockies play at Coors Field. And in the past, if it was a night game, it always seemed to drag on forever, and I never got home before midnight. I am hoping the pitch clock will speed up the games here in Colorado, too, even if the Rockies do regularly give up dozens of runs each game. And considering they finished in last place last year, losing 94 games, and have not made any significant changes to the roster this year, I suspect that trend will continue. I hate to say "wait until next year" before the season has even begun, but there you go.
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