Ready to Rumble

I don't know if you noticed or not. It's possible that it eluded your knowledge. It might be possible that you heard nothing about it. Since you're reading I'm going to assume that you knew. Are you ready for it? Seriously... are you ready? Today was OPENING DAY! Yes I know, how could people not know that. Sadly enough there are those who aren't aware of the finer things in life.

I am a teacher (kind of). In my class I have only adult men. Yesterday I informed them that even thought March 31 fell on a Holiday this year, we would still be having class. A glazed look fell over their eyes and they didn't know what to think. I could tell what was going through their heads. "What Holiday is tomorrow?" "Has our teacher lost his mind?" I felt a little sad when I noticed a big grin on one mans face. He looked at me and said "Obviously we're the only two that know what you're talking about."

Okay, so maybe Opening Day isn't a National Holiday, but maybe it should be! It's a big deal. The best part about this is that this means baseball is in full swing. No more waiting. No more what if's and maybe's. This is it. What the teams have been training for and the fans have been trash talking for. I hope they're ready.

As a Cubs fan the question is always "Is this the year?" Most analyst aren't saying that it is. Looking at the roster and some of the Spring training hurdles the Cubs are being overlooked. This is fair. We don't have a star studded team and we didn't show a lot of consistency or cohesion in spring training.

At this point I do have to mention that we did beat the White Sux, sorry Sox, both times we played them.

The truth is that we can pull it out and compete this year. I feel confident that we have a solid rotation. I'm not thrilled with how things played out with Silva, but I became a fan of Cashner last season and I think he's a great fit. The only question is the consistency of Big Z, but even then we know he'll win a good number of games. Our hitting should be good. With Soriano healthy we know he'll show up. If Colvin and Castro and Byrd show up like they did last year we have a pretty good lineup. Our weaknesses are most likely to be Pena, Ramirez and Fukudome. All of them have proven in the past that they can be very good. If they show up as well we could definitely contend for our division.

I like the combination of veterans and young players. I think it adds experience to energy. Those two things can take you very far especially when there's some good talent behind both.