Opening Day 2008

From around the league:

Philadelphia 6 Green Day 4
Philly gets a big 2 run homer from Rocky Balboni who drove in 4 runs on the day. Charlie Zito goes 7-6-4-3-0-2 for the win, and Steve King gets the save.

Portland 3 Florida 2
Roger Lewis pitches 8 dominant innings of 1-hit ball (8-1-1-1-4-7) to get the victory and Jet Storm picks up the save. On the first play of the game, George Kird misplayed a pop-up to let Kimba Bartee reach base. Kird more than made up for the miscue when he threw out Bartee trying to steal 2nd on the next play, and later hit the decisive solo homer to provide the insurance run that Portland needed.

Los Angeles 3 Detroit 1
Jason Baret dominates (8-3-1-0-4-7) to get the win and Randy Wagner picks up the save. In a losing effort, Travis Steele gets beaned with a pitch and will be out of action for about 1 week.

Alaska 5 St. Louis 3
Jojo Lewis is unimpressive in his Alaska debut (6-9-3-3-4-5) but picks up the win anyway. Reggie Stocker goes 3-3 with 2 doubles and George Frog goes 2-4 with 2 RBIs. George Cunningham wins the closers job and gets the job done with a perfect 9th. Ryne Solo decides to go with the Tony LaRussa strategy and bats his pitcher 8th, with rookie Wilfredo Martin batting 9th. Alaska also starts 4 rookies in this game.

Hawaii 2 Bay Area 0
Jared DeMario pitches 8 strong innings (8-2-0-0-2-2) to get the win, and Troy Lewis strikes out the side in the 9th to pick up the save. DeMario also helped himself by driving in the only 2 runs of the game with a 2 out 5th inning single.

Denver 8 New York 1
Denver pounds out 14 hits and rocks Pedro Lewis (6-10-5-5-3-8). Denver's new outfield does well with Jack Hollis picking up a double and triple and Keith Cerrano getting 3 hits and 2 doubles. Bill Neuman was unhittable in the win for Denver (7-1-1-1-2-6). Ricky Buckley went 0-4 with a strikeout and 2 errors in the loss.

Hollywood 6 Toronto 1
Rene St. Claire (8-7-1-1-2-8) handled his old club and outpitched Danny Almonte (4-6-6-6-3-3). Geoff Favre and Keith Vasbinder hit homeruns to account for all of the scoring in the 4th inning, with Favre's hit being a grand slam.

Encyclopedia of APBA Baseball

It is here. Check out the stats for every batter and pitcher who has ever played the game. The links are on the sidebar of this blog.

In just one week, the stat department of THSN has already made more progress than was expected for the whole season. The longterm goals will include team pages, historical standings, fielding stats, and leader boards. These goals may not be realized any time soon, but in the meantime this is a huge leap in the content of THSN's website, and I will be content to look at these pages for quite a while.

One modification, which should be easy enough to implement in the coming week, is breaking up the indexes into smaller files grouped by player last names, such as A-C, D-F, etc.

If anyone has any other ideas on something to add to the encyclopedia, let us know about it by posting here.

Charlie Howard traded

The Hawaii Hounddogs have acquired Outfielder Charlie Howard and catcher Pudge Fernandez from Texas for 5 players: Outfielder Vernell Hightower, minor league outfielders Chip Atkinson and Chad Horlacher and minor league pitchers Vince Everts and Hershel Perry.

Howard, 33, hit a career best .330 last year with 16 homers and 81 RBI. His on-base percentage was an outstanding .426. Fernandez, 37, hit only .207 last year but brings veteran leadership to the Hounddogs. He will be playing in his 19th season, still excels defensively, and has two world series rings.

Hightower hit .265 with 19 homers last year and is expected to compete for time in left field and as a DH. Texas hopes the other players will put them in better position to compete in a year or two. Of the prospects, the most notable is Perry, who is the nephew of Krusty the clown.