Baseball!

First off, it's been a while since we've had Benjamin pictures. So, to keep your interest (or to at least make you scroll through the words) I'll toss some in throughout the post.


Baseball starts back up this weekend, which is the best news this side of "Ed McMahon's at the door with a giant check." The Cardinals are on FSN tonight (which hopefully our cable company will show), ESPN tomorrow afternoon for the Civil Rights Game in Memphis, then ESPN2 Sunday night for the opening game of the season. Looking forward to having a game on every night as well as catching radio broadcasts on my XM.

Predicted winners for the season
AL: Red Sox, White Sox, Angels, Indians as the wild card.
NL: Mets, Cardinals, Dodgers, Brewers as the wild card.
World Series: Angels over Cardinals

I know, I didn't pick the Cardinals to win. That said, I've picked them to go farther than just about anyone else. The pitching is looking pretty good right now, so it's going to be a matter of how much production can they get out of that outfield.

Add to the normal fun of the opening baseball weekend is my draft in the Friends League. This league is entering its ninth year in this current incarnation, though it's quite similar (in setup and ownership) to the one I ran from 1992-1997. We never can get everyone in the same room, so we have really taken to the IM and cell phone methods of making picks if necessary. It looks like about 5 of us will be drafting here on Sunday, with the other 4 doing the long-distance bit. I'm quite fond of the keepers I have in this league, and I think since I have draft picks this year (instead of my situation last year where I didn't select until the eighth round) I can do fairly well.

The fun part is deciding who to take first in the draft. Even though I have a great pitching staff, I have to say I am leaning on taking another starter. It's between Rich Harden, Matt Cain and Daiske Matsuzaka, but I'm guessing one of those guys won't be around to me when I pick, even though I've got the second overall selection.

Poker was just agonizing last Friday. Not that it wasn't fun, mind you. It was one of those nights where no one would go out. People would go all in, get called, and double or triple up and get right back into it. I had a couple of those happen myself. I botched my betting on my last hand, though it probably wouldn't have mattered, and got knocked out in fourth place. Which is extremely frustrating since we only pay three spots. That's the closest I've been to the money in a long time. However, a sixth and a fourth in my last two tries is pretty decent. I won't make next weekend's game, most likely, so I'll just have to hope my run of good play carries over until next time.

Long time readers of the blog will appreciate the next sentence--I'm going to have to mow my yard this afternoon. Obviously, I'm not looking forward to it. Mowing and I hardly ever get along, and I doubt that we'll be better friends now that it's been around 18 months since I've done it. Thanksfully, I won't have to deal with it too much, as my parents have arranged for the kids who mowed it last year to come do it this summer, since we'll have our hands full with Sarah and all. But it has to be done now, and I don't think they are up and running yet. So here we go. We'll see if everything goes smoothly and I can get it done in time to see the game on TV. I'd not lay good odds on it.

Meron continues to do well. We're less than two months from the delivery date, which continues to boggle our minds. We got a lot of things out of the current office/future Benjamin room, but the big desk is probably the next thing. Once that goes into the current scrapbook room, we can finally finish it up, get it Thomas-ified and get Benjamin into it. Plans are to get that done in the next couple of weeks.

Hope everyone enjoys Opening Day! Go Cardinals!