It’s Opening Day, Baby!
Tue, Apr 3, 2007
by Geoff Young
I really wanted to prepare a cool little preview of the opening series, but I’m too excited to think straight. The Padres kick off their NL West title defense this afternoon in San Francisco against former manager Bruce Bochy (who still got front-page billing in the U-T on a day when the big news item was Adrian Gonzalez‘ contract extension) and the Giants. The game starts at 1:35 p.m., PT; we’ll have the IGD up and running about an hour before then.
Meanwhile, congratulations to reader Jay Mars, who has won our Guess the Padres’ 2007 Opening Day Roster contest. Jay correctly picked 23 of the 25 guys on the Opening Day roster (full results available as spreadsheet) and for his efforts gets a Ducksnorts T-shirt of his choosing. Jay, let me know what you want and where it’s going, and I’ll send that out to you right away. Thanks to everyone for participating; we’ll try to get more contests going this season — any suggestions are welcome.
Finally, thanks to Dex at Gaslamp Ball for tipping us off to Ballhype. From the site: “Ballhype tracks more than 1,600 sports blogs to find great content so you don’t have to. Hype up the best stories, submit new links, or write your own posts, and let the fans decide.” C’mon over, join the Padres Nation group, make me your friend, hype Ducksnorts. Give some love to all the excellent local blogs. It’ll be great.
Okay, that’s all for now. IGD at 12:30 p.m. PT. Be here…
Picking up where last year's version left off, the Ducksnorts 2008 Baseball Annual provides in-depth analysis of and commentary on the San Diego Padres. Get your copy today.
April 3, 2007 at 8:50 am
I’m doing the happy dance in my cube right now!
Thanks to DVR my opening day does not start until 4:35 Central.
It’s going to take extreme levels of self-control not to log on to Ducksnorts from 3:30 to 4:30. Oh man.
Help.
April 3, 2007 at 9:03 am
Should we make predictions? Well, I think the Pads are similar to last year hitting wise with improved pitching and an always steller bully. Defensively, we’ve taken a step back at third, but we shall see how Kooz does. I predict a season of offensive stuggle like last year, but good pitching. I think the Dodgers are the team to beat this year. Pads can win a third straight title if the Dodgers can’t get out of the fog. Giants, Snakes, Rocks, all have pitching questions. Pads and Dogs have offense questions. Pitching beats offense must of the time. Pads post 86 wins, if the dodgers can beat that, they win.
April 3, 2007 at 9:16 am
Debbie, thanks for the reminder - I just told my TiVo to record the game. Between that and MLB radio here in the office, I’m not going to accomplish a whole lot today.
April 3, 2007 at 10:16 am
Is it bad that I think the Pads are going to go down to the wire with Arizona? 87-89 wins for 1st and 2nd…I think LA is an 83 win club, Frisco is old and not good enough to compete for 6 months, and Colorado has never won more than 83 games…guessing that streak won’t be broken this year.
PM the only step back was from Vinny…and frankly, the offensive production increase that we should see will be well worth it. Also, as pointed out many times last year, Vinny was not what he used to be with the glove anyway, so I am guessing we will not notice any drop-off in D at the hot corner.
April 3, 2007 at 10:21 am
I think we win 89 games this season and the division title. Only about 3 hours to go…
April 3, 2007 at 10:22 am
Thanks for the link, Geoff! It’ll be nice to see a big happy San Diego contingent on Ballhype.
However, due to birthright, I’m contractually obligated to say: Let’s go Giants.
April 3, 2007 at 10:27 am
And I’m going to jinx the Giants by saying Go Gigantes!!
April 3, 2007 at 10:34 am
I bought my boss Slingbox for Christmas..just so we could watch Day games in the office! Just got it setup and it rocks.
April 3, 2007 at 10:56 am
8: Philthy, does Slingbox work “in reverse?” I know it can let me watch TV on my PC, but can it send MLB.TV internet broadcasts to my TV?
April 3, 2007 at 11:11 am
Philthy *8. I also have a Slingbox and you can hook it up to your mobile phone, as well. You need a Palm operating system (the Slingbox program was just released in Beta) or Windows Mobile.
#9. No. Can’t pull that off, to my knowledge.
April 3, 2007 at 12:50 pm
I read Ducksnorts daily during the last season (oh the joys of having your own office and a slack job) but never posted. I figured the time was right to say ‘hi’ with the new season underway. Go Padres
April 3, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Hi, Tyler; welcome!
April 3, 2007 at 1:13 pm
RE: 11, hello and welcome!
April 3, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Re: 8
Most modern TVs have a VGA input on them. If you can figure out a way to run a VGA cable from your PC to your TV, then you’re golden.
Also, some Dell laptops are packaged with adapters that go S-Video out to Composite Video in.