It's Baseball Season!

Two games in and so far the Mariners are doing well. Then they started off tonight's game in Oakland with TWO home runs in the first inning! The first one from the lead-off batter Gutierrez...

I had picked up some Mariner's Spring Training shirts for some of my great-nephews and great-niece. This afternoon I got this neat picture from Niece Becky of her son Case and his new shirt. I get such a kick out of this age when you get those wonderful cheesy grins when you try to take a picture.

I have spent most of the day off and on, getting stuff organized for my trip to Kansas City in the morning. After a thorough search, we finally decided that we had left our two suitcases in the storage shed at the ranch... So I am packing everything in my Laural Burch bag, which is fine except it does not have wheels. I'll only be gone for two nights, so it shouldn't be too heavy.

The cheapest flight from Phoenix to KC is on Southwest Airlines, almost by half. I really dislike flying SW, but since my way is being paid... ;-(

We wondering what the traffic will be like in the morning. My flight leaves at 7:55 and we've been trying to figure what time we have to leave here. It's a good thirty plus miles to the airport, so you know it's going to be an early morning.

Cincinnati Reds Fall to Mariners...

What a contrast to the game we went to last week! Instead of dark clouds, rain, thunder and lightning (resulting in a cancelled game), we had 91 degree weather and sunshine! Today the Mariners were playing the Cincinnati Reds at the Peoria Sports Complex. We had the same seats we had last week, up in the 302 section of Club Seats.

It was an interesting game. The Reds were pretty tough on Joe Saunders, the Mariners starting pitcher, getting 7 runs on him in the first  3 2/3 innings. Then Michael Morse got hot. He had back to back home runs in the 4th and 5th innings. Here he is coming home in the 5th inning after driving in Morales and Wells --

During the break after the 5th inning, many of the veteran players of the 2013 squad were pulled from the game and several of the youngsters came in. One we have been watching for is Mike Zunino. He was this year's Number One Draft Pick. He's a catcher and was the MVP in the College World Series games.Though all the scuttlebutt says he'll be playing in the Minors this year, he was invited to attend Spring Training. This picture was taken just as he had hit the home-run that won the game for the Mariners. Final score 8-7!

By the time we walked back to our car and got out of the ball park, we were just in time for the 5 PM "going home" traffic. It's a good thing we had eaten brats at the game, as it took us almost two hours to get back to Auntie Violet. The driver had made a stop for soft ice cream cones, so I didn't even have to worry about dessert when we got home.

They Don't Play Ball in Thunderstorms!

The weather forecasters had been predicting that the storm that hit the California coast yesterday would be here late this afternoon. Instead, it started raining hard enough about 3 AM this morning to wake me up. It rained hard all morning! Then about 10:30 it appeared to start clearing up. I had been checking the Mariners Spring Training web-site all morning. As it began to clear, the site said that the game was on.

It's almost an hour's drive from Valle del Oro in Mesa over to the Peoria Sports Complex in Peoria. We could see more and more blue sky as we drove, so we were feeling pretty good about the game. The field in Peoria was gorgeous today.

They are celebrating the twentieth year of the facility and it is in great shape --

The Mariners were playing the Oakland Athletics today.  Hector Noesi was the lead-off pitcher for the Mariners and the A's just ate him alive! The wind was gusty and blowing towards the outfield. The A's got two two-base hits and three home runs in the first inning. And the poor Mariners couldn't buy a hit. We have watched Dustin Smoak since he first came up when we were in Arizona two years ago. We'd read that he was doing pretty good this year, but today he couldn't do anything...

By the start of the fourth inning, the clouds around us had gotten very dark and the lights were turned on. Then we started seeing flashes of lightning over beyond left field. The umpires immediately pulled the teams off the field and the ground crew started pulling out the tarp.

The wind gave the ground crew and their helpers a pretty tough time. They had trouble hanging on to it -- and keeping out from under it.  About that time, it really started to pour. We thought it might just be a rain delay, but saw that the teams were not only leaving the dugouts, but were taking all their equipment with them...

Since the teams hadn't played a full five innings to make it a legal game, they later announced it would be considered a cancelled game. We should be able to trade our tickets in for another Spring Training  game in the next couple of weeks.

Registrations

I've spent part of today on the computer getting registered for the Mennonite Church USA convention which will be in Phoenix the first week in July. Once you go through the registration process, you get to go the the housing portion of the web-site and get your hotel reservations.

It actually is a pretty efficient process, but I was not able to get the reservation I needed. I emailed the folks at the Conference office and got a suggestion of how to change the request. After playing around with dates and room requests, I was able to get the room reservation we needed. I really appreciate having the kind of folks in the office who are so helpful!

We made a quick Costco run this morning and for the first time ever that I can remember, we actually got out of a Costco with a bill that was only two figures! Of course, the fact that they were out of Starbucks K-cups probably helped!

It's finally gotten warm in Mesa again. I think it was in the high seventies today with beautiful sunshine. Today was the third day of Spring Training in Peoria for the Mariners. Maybe they brought the nice weather with them?