Open Thread - ST Game #20 - A's @ Seafaring Safeco Swabs of Seattle @ Peoria, AZ @ 1:05 PM

Is that a Light Saber, or is Ichiro just glad to see us?

Mariners OF Eric Byrnes realizes he has totally misread yet another flyball route, and that he is less than half a second from yet another face-first introduction to the left field wall.

Hello again, Sabermetrosexuals of the Divine WHIP, and welcome to your latest Spring Training conflagration, starring your 2010 A's-in-progress taking on the Seattle Marinaras, who are favored in some quarters (and bet on by a few dimes) to win the West this season.  As far as I know, the Athletics will send the hefty lefty Brett Anderson to the hill today, who has looked sharp thusfar in March whilst accumulating a tidy 3.24 ERA.  The M's counter with the amazing "?," fresh from his reunion tour with '60s hitmakers The Mysterians... King Felix pitched Saturday and Cliff Lee is out with an abdominal strain he surely must have incurred laughing uncontrollably at any number of Eric Byrnes defensive highlights I could mention, so today's starter remains a mystery based on anything I can glean off the www as of 8 AM today.  And I just typoed "Saturday" as "Satyrday," so you know not to trust a single word written here because I am just like all the rest, out for one thing and one thing only.

Rumor has it that today is the day we shall see the 2010 advent of Justin Duchscherer, fresh from having the nerves around his SI joint singed off in a giant bubbling laser cauldron of Epic Fire whilst lightning and thunder boomed ominously in the distance as he rose from the flames like a phoenix to take the ball.  Or, he just laid down on a table in a fairly sterile doctor's office and had a pretty straightforward procedure that will enable him to pitch pain-free performed by a fairly sober-looking team of medical professionals...although I have to say I prefer the former, if only for its endearing surface resemblance to that scene in Young Frankenstein where Gene Wilder finally gets Peter Boyle to come to life.

A's skipper Bob Geren contemplates how to get DH Jack Cust (1 HR, 2 RBI) going at the plate.

I suppose the sluggers never slug in Spring Training, so I shouldn't worry about the fact that Jack Cust's lonely homer is probably sitting weeping in a seedy desert cantina somewhere, wondering if company will ever show up to drown out the yawning chasm of melancholic silence reflected by the shimmering surface of the Cuervo Gold... sort of like something out of Un Jonrón Singular de Soledad by Don de la Marquez Sesenta y Siete, one of my favorite authors on the (more related than you could ever imagine) subjects of Baseball Metaphysics and pie.  The one I am really worried about is Jacob Quinn Fox (his mom calls him that when she's real mad at him), who probably wouldn't get claimed off waivers by the Bad News Bears right now.  He of the spazztacular .065 average, complemented as it has been by a showing with the glove that makes the aforementioned Messrs. Byrnes and Cust look like Roberto Clemente and Joe DiMaggio, respectively.

The Oakland training staff desperately attempts a last-minute resuscitation of the career of A's OF Jake Singer Fox.

So, whaddaya know, I gotta split again just as the game gets hopping to go run a couple of errands... but I t'ink the game might just be on the wireless this time, although to find a KTRB broadcast schedule online you must have to know some secret URL that's only accessible through a full-on seance session with the ghosts of Eddie Joost and Charles O. Finley.  Every week I tell myself, this is the week where I go off like Peter Finch in Network on a rant-tastic spree, holding exactly ten million tons of nothing back about how no ownership team of any professional sports franchise that would employ a radio station such as this utterly pathetic excuse for one could possibly expect to be taken seriously when they say it's all their fan base's fault. 

Staffers unveil the new KTRB-AM company logo at a San Quentin, CA press conference last Thursday.

But then I smoke some of this (a-w-e-s-o-m-e, like an afternoon with Bob Marley's cat) shit my friend grew and I just can't bring meself to make your Monday any harder than Mondays already sometimes are, even without the silicon chip inside your head getting switched to overload.  All in all (KTRB and other nagging injuries to the A's notwithstanding) I am mostly pleased so far by what I've seen on the field, and I don't think we need to worry that the 2010 team will mirror the broadcast signal and quaff mad bollocks (in English that's "suck total balls") after sundown. 

Anyway I will take the radio set with me just in case, so I'll be abreast of the action (insert Beavis & Butthead laughter here... heh heh he said "insert" heh heh) when I return to write the Happy Recap.  Happy in the sense that even if we lose, no one will (probably) die in the process, the game doesn't even count anyway, and it will still be just two weeks until these two teams clash on Opening Night at the Coliseum in a game that does.

EN declares himself the funniest looking person on AN.  Not pictured: any conceivable argument to the contrary.

PS--If anyone wants to put the lineups for this game, a Gameday link, the answer to the question of where we as a species come from, or just a really good recipe for English Trifle in the comments below, you'll get no complaint from me ;) thanks in advance!!!