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OK, I hate the Rally Monkey. It was cute when it was just a jumping monkey on the Angels’ Jumbotron. But now it’s a stupid commercialized piece of crap – the commercial they showed on ESPN really irritated me – and I except I’ll hate it more once they hand out their Rally Monkey bobble head later this year in Anaheim. :(
We start the season and the Showalter regime with a win Sunday night in Anaheim against the defending world Series champions. The 6-3 win was fueled by three longballs – two by usual suspects (Arod & Gonzalez) and the third by Mike Young. Young’s was the turning point in the game, we were down 2-1 at that point, and we went up 4-2, and never looked back after that point. I also liked Mike Young’s home run as a big middle finger to “My second baseman must have godzilla like offensive numbers” GM John Hart. Mike Young is the best thing we’ve had come along in ages, and to mess with him like this really bothers me.
Anyway, we also got decent pitching too – although I’m not sure why Valdes was pulled after five innings and 65 odd pitches. Our pen was great, giving up no runs, and only a couple hits over four innings. Newcomer Aaron Fultz looked great, and Cordero & Urbina were both lights out.
It’s only one game, but it’s something to enjoy – I was ready for a real baseball game after playing several games of World Series Baseball 2K3 on my Xbox earlier in the day, driving around to several bookstores in Dallas to find a copy of the Ft. Worth Star Telegram so I could get their (far better than the Dallas paper) baseball preview section, watching the Rangers/Astros preview show from Fox Sports Southwest that was on my TiVo from Friday evening, watching the 90 minute Baseball Tonight show. :)
My wife said now that baseball season is started again, that I will be a happier person. I’m not sure I like the implications that I’m an unhappy person during the offseason, but baseball season HAS started again. :)

That’s it. Spring training is over. We finish up 16-14-1 with a 6-5 win over the Mariners. I was busy doing some “house stuff”, so I only got to listen to the 9th inning of this game, but it’s nice to say that the regular season is here finally. Tomorrow night it all starts up for real. I can’t wait! :)

I didn’t realize this game was on the radio, or I would have listened to all of it. I checked the MLB site around 10:45 and saw there was a feed, so I started listening to it. When I started, the game was already 4-4, but I still got to see some of the Juan Gonzalez show. :)
Nice to see a big offensive outburst like this – 6RBI for Juan, but I hope this carries over. These are nice to see, but I want to see ’em when they count.
John Thomson came out of the game iwth an injury, and how it will impact the roster is not yet known. However, other than John, the rest of our pitching was quite good – The team of Powell / Cordero / Urbina / Santos / Garcia combined for 6.1 innings, giving up just one run. As we wind down, I’m a bit concerned about Esteban Yan – he hasn’t seemed to have gotten it together yet. :(

Not available, but it was nice to see Chan Ho Park pitch good three times in a row. Hope it holds up. :)

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