Alright, baseball is back! And my team, the (NL West Champion) San Diego Padres, kick off their 2007 season today in San Francisco against the Giants. Its always an exciting time of year for players and fans because everyone is optimistic for the upcoming season - maybe this will be our year. Everyone starts off with a clean slate and then its six months, 162 games, of baseball that ends with the playoffs and World Series in October.

And of course, I'm excited about the Padres' prospects this year. There are some new faces, young and old, that will hopefully help this team win a third division crown in a row, and even get further in the playoffs too. The pitching staff looks poised to have another great season. But there are a lot of other question marks, and the biggest one for me is whether the team can get the clutch and timely hitting to win games. So often last season, especially in the playoffs, the Padres' rallies would fall short and they couldn't produce hits and runs when the game was close or when they were behind. Thanks to the bullpen, they had a winning percentage in 1-run games last season, but when the team falls behind, they rarely come back to win it. If they find a way to do well in those clutch situations, the Padres will win a lot of games and they definitely be a lot of fun to watch this season. And with their new coach, Bud Black, I think they can do it. Go Padres!!!

I'm also excited to share the news that I will be going on a baseball-themed road trip with some friends this summer. Woo hoo! The goal of our trip is to see as many baseball games as we can at ballparks that we really want to visit. We've talked about doing this trip for years but couldn't make it happen. But when the news came last August that groundbreaking was going to commence on the new Yankee ballpark, that's what made us realize we're running out of time. We finally got serious about it and decided to do it this season. I anxiously waited for the season schedule to come out and when it finally did, I found the perfect time for us to go. I won't be giving all of our info now, but we're going to 9 games in 7 cities in 13 days! We'll be going to Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, New York, and Washington DC. So we'll be hitting the 3 oldest ballparks(Fenway, Yankee, Wrigley) and the 3 ballparks(Yankee, Shea, RFK) getting replacements within the next 3 years. Too bad we couldn't do more cities/games, but I'm really happy that me and my friends are able to do this schedule. Of course I plan to bring my laptop and blog our trip as it happens. So stay tuned for more info on our road trip as it gets closer!