Opening Day 2007: Hour 2

11:00Chicago Cubs at Cincinnati Reds (ESPN 2, WGN, and FSN Ohio)
L.A. Dodgers at Milwaukee Brewers (FSN Prime Ticket)
Cleveland Indians at Chicago White Sox (Comcast SportsNet Chicago)
11:01 — Vin Scully! “And a pleasant good day to you wherever you may be.” Now it really is baseball season.
11:13 — Hey, a new family movie starring Ice Cube! Looks about as good as the Devil Rays.
11:15 — There sure are a lot of car commercials on YES. But I thought no one in New York drove.
11:19 — The Blue Jays caps have a “T” instead of a “J,” I notice. Too bad, because I liked the “J.” Maybe that’s still the home cap.
11:21 — Two female fans in the upper deck of Comerica Park are interviewed. One of them refers to it as “Tiger Stadium” and is quickly corrected by the interviewer.
11:24 — Since the Reds are wearing their new mustachioed Mr. Redlegs patches, perhaps they should all have grown mustaches to match.
11:25 — The Superstation WGN Scoreboard graphic has a problem, I say.

I contend that “Sponsored By:” should either be right-justified so it’s against the sponsor graphic, or that graphic should say “Sponsored by Scotts” (which would work fine even with the graphic there on the right).
11:29 — C.C. Sabathia looks a little large.
11:31 — The White Sox announcers start talking about how one should not judge a book by its cover when it comes to C.C. Sabathia. I guess I’ve been properly chastised! However, Darin Erstad promptly hit a 2-run homer off him to pull the White Sox to within 3 runs in the bottom of the 1st.
11:37 — Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley is in the stands at U.S. Cellular Field, but does not have to be interviewed by someone with a radio mike.
11:39 — The Yankees infield has been a bit error-prone today, which has helped the Devil Rays tie.
11:40 — First appearance of Joe Maddon, coming out for an explanation from the umpire about a player being called out on a bunt that hits him in fair territory.
11:42 — Rocco Baldelli hits an RBI single, and the Devil Rays are leading.
11:44 — Amtrak — the Washington Nationals of transportation!

11:49 — Hey, Dr. Cox from “Scrubs” is in that movie with Ice Cube. Well, John C. McGinley, I mean. I assume he’s not playing the same character he plays on “Scrubs.” Not to be confused with John C. Reilly, who is not to be confused with Andy Richter, who is not to be confused with John Candy.
11:54 — Comcast SportsNet’s “Scores on the Fours” should perhaps be renamed “Scores on Most But Not All of the Fours.”

Opening Day 2007: Hour 1

When Opening Day came around a year ago, I was unemployed with no immediate prospects. Within a month, I had been hired for a full-time temp job. And by the time the World Series rolled around, I was hired as an actual employee.

So it’s clear that baseball is a force for good. Let’s see what it can do for me this year.

10:00Tampa Bay Devil Rays at New York Yankees (ESPN and YES)
Atlanta Braves at Philadelphia Phillies (TBS)
Toronto Blue Jays at Detroit Tigers (FSN Detroit)
Florida Marlins at Washington Nationals (MASN)
Time for everyone’s pre-produced “Opening Day” intros.
10:05 — The Tigers manage to get under way first.
10:06 — The Blue Jays have the first at-bat of the season — a walk.
10:08 — And the Blue Jays steal against Ivan Rodriguez. This season is going great for the Tigers so far.
10:09 — The Marlins steal third! Looks like this is going to be the Year of the Stolen Base, as the L.A. Times sort of predicted today.
10:11 — Carl Crawford leads off for the Devil Rays with a hit against the Yankees.
10:12 — Crawford steals second!
10:15 — Rocco Baldelli, whose name is on the back of the Devil Rays T-shirt I’m wearing, hits to the warning track. The Yankees announcers say it could have been a home run if the humidity were lower today.
10:19 — I have to go get my laundry out of the dryer. Meanwhile, things fall apart for the Devil Rays.
10:30 — The Yankees score two runs, which the YES graphics briefly award to the Devil Rays.

10:40 — Hey, it’s Adrian Fenty, the mayor of Washington, D.C., in the stands at RFK Stadium, being interviewed with a radio mike that’s not quite working properly.
10:49 — The Devil Rays get their first run of 2007. First of many, I’m sure.
10:52 — Not particularly baseball-related, but I get an automated phone call from the L.A. Times telling me that the “TV Times” section is being discontinued after next week, but I’ll still be able to get TV listings online. They don’t know I have a TiVo.

Home plate dish

The MLB Extra Innings pay-per-view package will now be exclusively on DirecTV, because DirecTV offered a lot of money and also agreed to exclusively carry what appears to be MLB’s version of NFL Network.

I do have DirecTV, but don’t subscribe to Extra Innings (I certainly enjoy watching it on Opening Day via the free preview, but I wouldn’t watch enough games during the season to make it worth the cost). I’m a little concerned about MLB limiting its exposure like this, particularly to the all-baseball network.

In the past, DirecTV’s version of Extra Innings has only included games airing on regional sports networks carried by DirecTV — so if, say, a Phillies-Dodgers game were being carried on Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia (not available on DirecTV) and on over-the-air Channel 13 in Los Angeles (not available on DirecTV except as a local channel in the L.A. area), it wouldn’t be on Extra Innings on DirecTV. Or a Blue Jays-Devil Rays game that’s on whatever weird Canadian network the Blue Jays are on, and only available via Morse code relay in the Tampa Bay area. So I’m wondering if the new exclusive Extra Innings package these types of games — can’t wait to see, or perhaps hear, the Morse code Devil Rays games.

Recommended baseball reading

Jury duty is good for getting some reading in. For the past two days while I was in the main Los Angeles criminal courts building, I read Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Blunders. These are blunders not by players, but by coaches, managers, general managers, and owners. It starts with the White Sox getting rid of first baseman Jack Fournier in 1917 in favor of future “Black Sox” ringleader Chick Gandil, and ends with Joe Torre not putting Mariano Riviera into Game 4 of the 2003 World Series.

Yes, the penultimate chapter is about a certain sequence of events that occurred just six days earlier, in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, and the Devil Rays get an entire chapter (the idea being that the franchise got off on the wrong foot when they immediately traded away Bobby Abreu after taking him with their first expansion draft pick).

Only the finest in baseball-related jokes

Turns out that if you have high-definition TV, the picture clarity is such that you can see pain lines and pain stars. However, it looks like it’s hard to keep the colors in balance on these old-timey woodgrain-cabinet HDTVs: the blue on the Dodgers uniform looks black, and Dodger Stadium and the denizens thereof look green. Actually, with those vertical posts visible in the stands, it looks more like Fenway Park.

In other news, please note that on May 11th, I correctly predicted that Scott Kazmir would be the Devil Rays’ sole All-Star Game representative.

Their other fan in Los Angeles is a quiz show writer

About a month ago, “Jeopardy!” brought us this nugget of information, and then on Monday, as the $600 clue in a category called We’re No Angels, this came up…

Then, on the Thursday show, the $2,000 clue in Musical Instruments was the following. Not baseball-related, but I know Levi will enjoy it…

(Monday’s clue was correctly answered — or, you know, correctly questioned. The three contestants didn’t even attempt the Thursday one.)