2000 Spring Training: April 2000 Archives

As I awoke this morning, I had the hardest time pulling myself out of bed and going to work. Hundreds of illnesses and excuses whirled through my head as I contemplated calling in sick. Unfortunately, no one would believe for a minute that I was sick today knowing full well that it is opening day. I wanted so bad to sit at home, my feet up watching a triple header on the satellite dish as baseball arrived in America for the 2000 season. I know that baseball officially kicked off last week but I have a hard time accepting the fact that opening day was held in Japan between two teams that I could care less about. At work, I set up a series of computers to stream audio from the games going on around the league. At one point I was listening to three games at the same time all while connected to ESPN's Gamecast so I could graphically see what was happening. I will readily admit that perhaps my productivity did suffer a bit but being the positive person that I am, I like to think I was merely stress testing the network and the Internet to determine whether we had enough bandwidth to run multimedia in the corporation. I can now confidently say yes our network can safely survive the beginning of baseball. I can hardly wait for tomorrow when I won't have to watch regular season baseball on television any more.

With the Diamondbacks opening day less than two days away, it is now starting to get serious. While the Diamondbacks are in Las Vegas to play their last spring training game against the Oakland Athletics, I am out getting my yearly supplies. When baseball season starts, there will be little time for me to do much shopping so on the weekend before the season, I am doing my survival shopping. I start off going to Sam's Club to pick up the 25 pound bag of salted peanuts. That should about last me the entire season. While I am there, I pick up 81 water bottles, one for each game in the regular season. I also picked up 24 boxes of fruit roll ups for when Whitney goes with me, 196 wet wipes for when I take Dakota, 32 AA batteries for when Tiffany takes the GameBoy to the games, 15 pounds of peanut M&Ms for when Trina goes, 12 pounds of gummy bears for Mallorie, and 24 packages of gum for Ashley. Once the food shopping was completed, I made my way to the Sports Authority to pick up 4 regulation scorebooks for keeping score. That should be enough pages for the entire year if we only play 18 extra inning games. I also picked up 3 sets of shoe laces, 2 baseballs for the kids to get autographed at the games, and 2 sets of Sharpie markers. When complete, I went home and cleared room in the pantry for my stash. I then wrapped the food in police tape with a note threatening the kids that these supplies had to last us until October 2. I think that I am about ready for opening day to begin. I will just wait patiently for Tuesday to arrive.

It is incredible to believe that after 10 years, commissioner Bud Selig has decided to reinstate Pete Rose to baseball and make him eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2001. This news alone would set the media on its ear as editors around the country would be rushing to include the news in their latest edition. But Selig did not stop there. He further stated that he would do away with the National League and American League format and baseball would be positioned into a conference alignment much like football. Given his new found powers, the commissioner did not need the approval of the owners to make such a move. Jerry Colangelo made comments before Saturday's Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox game.