Empyreal Environs

My comments on the first spring training game are two days late. I’ll never hack it as a beat blogger. Others bloggers can churn out game analyses as easily as breathing, while after two days I come up with:

• During the in-game interview, Theo Epstein was abusing Don Orsillo relentlessly. Orsillo states that he’s excited about David Wells joining the club, and Epstein fires back, “Because he reminds you of yourself?” The conversation takes some strange tangents and Epstein calls Orsillo “an odd man.” Which he is. I recall him saying that, as a child, he would make scoreboards while following games. Jerry Remy was merciless that evening. There’s also that lunar eclipse discussion, where Orsillo thought the sun came between the moon and earth. Remy broke out the telestrator for that one.
  
• There were no radar gun results during the NESN telecast, but earlier in the week Terry Francona claimed that Byung-Hyun Kim was now back up to 88-90 MPH. Kim pitched a 1-2-3 inning. I’m still pulling for him. His reclamation would be the ultimate redemption story. Ideally, it will come in a Yankees game.
• A caption for this photo from that game: “Kevin Millar points to left field foul territory, noting where the majority of his balls go.” Millar will have his typical extremely hot two months or so where he hits .400 with .602 slugging, and the rest of the season he will be hovering around the Mendoza line. As annoying as I sometimes find him, I have to admit I enjoy the buffoonery.
• “Woooooo-ten!” Now we know why Bill Mueller doesn’t get his name chanted. It’s because it doesn’t rhyme with “boo.” Change the pronunciation, and you have an eminently chantable name.
• There will always be some ne’er-do-well waving to the camera behind home plate. Even during a spring training game. I guess everyone needs to practice.

Welcome back, baseball. Good to see you, champs.

They know, who keep a broken tryst,
Till something from the Spring be missed
We have not truly known the Spring.
~Robert Underwood Johnson, “The Wistful Days”