Home opener

The local top league baseball franchise began its home schedule today with an afternoon game against the Philadelphia Athletics. With this in mind I headed out to see if I could find some outdoor baseball. My first stop was the home of the local small college athletic powerhouse.I expected that at this latitude you would want to be playing games on any day when the field is dry and the sun is shining.

I decided that maybe the Tommies were playing but were not playing a home game. There are a couple of other colleges that I was near enough to to make checking in on them fairly convenient.

Macalester:Saint Thomas has a fancier field, artificial turf infield, national championship banners on the outfield walls, Macalester has its own wind turbine.

Here's something I never expected to see again, an apparently free outdoor public phone.That's not a iPhone, but it pretty clearly is a MacPhone.

I checked one more field (Hamline) but they weren't playing either.

I was under the impression that there is a preferred orientation for baseball fields. I thought it was, when viewed from the perspective of home plate, facing east. The idea is that the setting sun should not shine into the eyes of the batter. It is allowed to shine into the eyes of the outfielders. The reasoning behind this is that batting is considerably more dangerous than playing outfield.

Well, whoever decided that has never seen outfield played at the level that I coached.

Anyway, the Saint Thomas field faces northwest, the Macalester field faces northeast, the field at Hamline faces southeast.

Conclusion?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

I rode home from there passing Lake Como on the way.Conditions have improved. Ice out has not been achieved but there is less snow on the ice and also there is a fairly large patch of open water over there near the point on the east side.

Again today it was the nicest day so far. I rode with a short sleeve base layer, short sleeve jersey and arm warmers. The process of de-layering has begun. The fourth day in a row was still harder than the first day but it was again easier than the day that preceded it.

I know I have posted this before, but what the heck, I love my bicycle.