Baseball Is Back! Spring Training Games Have Begun!

Baseball spring training games began this past Friday in Florida and Arizona. I was not able to watch the first spring training game between my South Side heroes, the Chicago White Sox, and their North Side rivals, the Chicago Cubs, live, but through the magic of MLB.com was able to watch a rebroadcast of it Friday night. The drawback is that unless you preset your preferences, you see the final score as you log on, and so I immediately knew that the Cubs had beaten the White Sox 8-1. Great - another long season to look forward to. But when I began to watch the game, it turned out that a single pitcher gave up 6 runs in the top of the first inning, and so nothing to worry about. Yet. The White Sox have almost 70 players in camp and are starting spring training by putting in a new pitcher each inning to see what they can do. And so the final score does not really matter. Which is why I am not excited that my adopted hometown team, the Colorado Rockies, coming off their worst season ever, have won 2 of their first 3 spring training games. Big deal.

One major change for the White Sox, besides all the new front office executives, is that play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti has left to become the voice of the Detroit Tigers, which is sad, since he was a fellow Southsider and grew up a White Sox fan. He has been replaced by John Schriffen, seen in the photograph on the right along with longtime White Sox announcer Steve Stone. Hopefully during these spring broadcasts, they will begin to develop the kind of back-and-forth banter and chemistry that Benetti and Stone had over the years. And Steve is convinced the White Sox are on the right track, and will be much improved from their 61-101 record last season. I have to admit the White Sox at least seem to be trying, as opposed to the Colorado Rockies, who draw close to three million fans a year on the strength of their beautiful ballpark, and have no incentive to change anything, even after a 103-loss season last year. But still, it is spring, and hope springs eternal for every team. So who knows? Yeah, right.