April 15 2007

Opening day fell on Jackie Robinson day. In honor, Jeff Heatley wore a jersey adorned with the number 42.

The first half of the game was a low-scoring affair. Not many baserunners for either team. The rare few got stranded, with one getting picked off of second base after a first-pitch-of-the-game double. To protect the guilty, he'll remain anonymous. As the pitcher's duel progressed, we were fortunate to have had the game of american pingpong to prepare us.

New Indian Jeff Paz proved a valuable addition, pitching five strong innings and shutting down the strong Delta hitters. We eventually managed to break the scoreless deadlock, which apparently awoke the sleeping giants in the other dugout. Their second pitcher was a knuckleballer who seemed much more hittable from the dugout than at the plate.

During one of Enrique's at-bats he was hit by a pitch, but we were left scratching our noggins when he was not awarded first base. The pitch did bounce before it hit him, but is that enough to negate a beanball? It shouldn't be, in our heavily biased opinion. Does anyone have a portion of the rule book to throw in our face regarding this occurence?

At 3-3 in the late innings, the Tigers were able to string together some timely hits and tack 3 runs on the board. Unable to get a significant rally going, we lost our opening game.

And now, a new feature for this season's blog! Today's Indians Play of the Day. Each game - and maybe for some practices - we will single out one play that was better than all the other plays for that game/practice. This is a subjective exercise, and readers may disagree with the choice. If you disagree with any of the choices, you can voice your disagreement, and offer your pick(s), in the chattered section found under each post. For this post, though, we don't think there will be any disagreement.

Today's iPod.
After pitching a stellar five innings that would have permanently disabled lesser arms, Jeff Paz manned shortstop. On a grounder that was just out of reach of the third baseman, Jeff hustled to his right, backhanded the ball, and threw across his body, across the diamond, and into the first baseman's glove to nail the batter/runner. Kudos.