Baseball is back! The season begins tonight as the Red Sox host the defending World Champion New York Yankees. Unfortunately I think the Angels were a Fuentes 0-2 pitch away from being the defending World Champions this season. If Fuentes would have done what most little leaguers are instructed to do on an 0-2 count instead of giving A-Roid a pitch that he could clobber, the Halos would have come back to Anaheim for 3 games with a 1-1 split in New York. The Halos former closer Francisco Rodriguez would always throw his slider in the dirt on an 0-2 pitch. How I would have loved to have seen him doing that instead of Fuentes grooving one. My son even commented “I wonder who misses who more, Frankie the Angels or the Angels missing Frankie”.

Tomorrow night is the Angels season opener so it is time to move past what could have been last season. Opening Day is a special day for every team (well maybe not the Pirates, j/k). Tomorrow I’ll be participating in the flag ceremony on the field as I’ve done for many years now. It is a tradition carried on by the friends and family of my high school classmate Steve Ambriz. He was an Orange City Council member that was tragically killed by a driver under the influence on May 25, 2006.

I’ve got a five day weekend to celebrate the start of the season. I attended the two preseason games in Anaheim this week. On Thursday, my mother took me into a suite for Wells Fargo for the game against the Padres. We got autographs after the game from former Angel David Eckstein. On Friday, I had a tailgate with a classmate that I’ve known since elementary school. My son got a ball at the game which he was quite thrilled with.

I’m looking forward to the 2010 season. I was disappointed that the Halos let Lackey go. He has such a great pitching mentality. He is quite a gamer as illustrated by his reluctance to leave ALCS game 5 last year. I think the Halos made the right decisions with regards to Vladimir Guerrero and Chone Figgins. Figgins has been a complete disappointment in the postseason and he is now on a team where it won’t matter 🙂 I am excited to see what Brandon Wood can do this year and hopefully Kendry Morales can meet or exceed what he did last season.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on my blog so there are a couple of offseason things that I want to update. In January, my friend Tom Duino ‘s wife Kathleen baked him a cake for his birthday. It is quite an impressive cake so I had to share it.

Another event that happened during the offseason was a visit to our little league fields from my favorite Halo player, Darin Erstad. Darin spent a couple of hours going to all of our fields and meeting with all of the players. He had signed photos that he handed out and he signed everything that the kids brought for him to sign. He posed for photos and everyone really enjoyed his visit. It was pretty amazing that he took the time for the kids and I couldn’t believe he brought 350 autographed photos for all of the players. They were all signed with his name and an inscription of “’02 WS Champs”. He also was kind enough to bring me a bat that he used when he was on the Angels. Darin is as great a guy off the field as he was on the field. Below are some photos from that day.