Lakeland Wrap-Up + Coinky-Dink of the Day

I just wanted to give a heads-up that the Season Preview may be shorter than I originally intended. I really haven’t started writing it yet, mostly because I would like Spring Training to conclude before I get much headway into it, since anything could happen these next two days in Atlanta, and I don’t want to get caught saying that [insert pitcher of your choice here] looks good and then have him get lit up by the Braves (Remember, Nate Robertson looked real good throughout all of Spring Training last year, until the final exhibition game at Minute Maid Park, where the Astros clobbered him). Along that same line, I don’t want to go on about how important someone is to the team, only to have him get injured either tonight or tomorrow (This actually happened to me last year, when I finished writing my preview early and then had to re-write parts of it after Granderson got hurt). The problem with this is that I work all weekend, so really the only time I have is tomorrow night and Sunday before The Amazing Race comes on. By the way, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting really sick of the Atlanta Braves. It seems like every other Spring Training game was against them. I’m glad the Tigers don’t see them in Interleague Play this year.

It’s a testament to how well Verlander had been pitching in the spring when getting lit up by the Braves “only” raised his ERA to 3.90. Still, it’s not really a good thing to have an outing like that right before you start the ones that count. But there’s nothing you can do about it except hope that Verlander’s gotten it out of his system now. However, despite the score, it’s a shame this game wasn’t on TV, cuz the whole switching uniforms thing would’ve been so stupidly hilarious to watch (my favorite was Inge switching jerseys with the batboy). Magglio didn’t have a great time of it as Al Kaline, but he picked things up in yesterday’s game, as did several of the other Tigers (Am I right in thinking that Brandon Inge ended up being the only one to hit five home runs?). There wasn’t a whole lot to gauge from the pitching standpoint. Eddie Bonine and Ryan Perry both threw up zeros, which is important. The majority of the game, however, was largely pitched by guys I’ve never heard of, although I did find the name “Josh Rainwater” amusing.

And now for the Coinky-Dink of the Day, as it seems that sometimes baseball/Tigers sneak up on you even when you’re doing something completely unrelated. Case in point: Yesterday I was watching the movie Volcano (not a cinematic masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, not to mention grossly inaccurate from a scientific standpoint, but I like cheesy disaster movies). There’s a scene early in the movie featuring the voice-over of a newscaster doing a report on a high-rise apartment building that will figure prominently in the film’s climax. What caught me (and I verified this with the closed captions) was the newscaster’s sign-off: “And now with the rest of the business news, here’s Jerry Laird.” Now, it’s not a stretch at all to connect “Jerry” to “Gerald” and…well…yes, I know it’s stupid, but I laughed at it anyways. By the way, Volcano came out in 1997, so it is almost assuredly just a coincidence.