Man, when you put it that way, baseball sure has some terrible team nicknames. Team names should be intimidating, scary. Lions. Tigers. Ocelots. Various other types of ocelots. Space. Commitment*. Here we have men on boats taking on colorless stockings. No part of that makes me want to watch the proceedings. Fortunately I won't be able to anyway.
* ladies, you know what I'm talking about!
When I was dropping off my rental car near the Phoenix airport yesterday, I saw a man wearing a White Sox jersey. My first thought was that I'd completely forgotten about the White Sox. My second thought, when I realized my first thought was stupid, was that I'd completely forgotten that the White Sox train in Arizona. They're just one of them invisible teams to me, I guess. The White Sox are like the John Jaso of baseball teams. "Hey, don't forget about the White Sox." "Would it matter if I did?"
Mariners, White Sox, 1:05pm PDT. Gameday link. On the radio. A week from today, the Mariners will be in Japan, facing the Hanshin Tigers. Now there's a team name. Gosh, I wonder who would win in a fight between mariners and tigers. They should be called the Seattle Very Heavily Armed Mariners. I guess with like harpoons and shit. And depth charges? Here's a starting lineup, for today:
Ackley, 2B
Saunders, CF
Olivo, C
Smoak, 1B
Liddi, 3B
Peguero, LF
Catricala, DH
Wilson, RF
Miller, SS
I like how Brad Miller is just kind of hanging around still, even though I don't like how it's partly because Brendan Ryan can't not hurt himself. The Mariners should probably amend Ryan's contract so that he can't own or operate an in-house personal coffee grinder. Come to think of it, Brendan Ryan either doesn't drink coffee, or he only drinks coffee, and he only eats coffee beans. Carlos Peguero is playing because whatever. I'm still not sure about this whole Michael-Saunders-at-number-two thing, but I'm more sure about that than I am about this whole Miguel-Olivo-at-number-three thing. Spring training lineups are so wacky. They're like Nickelodeon.
Starting for the Mariners is Blake Beavan, who I think of as a top-of-the-line pitching machine in a batting cage. Starting for the White Sox is Jake Peavy, who probably wishes he hadn't moved from Petco Park to US Cellular. Hong-Chih Kuo is available in relief and that could be a real bummer. Note that the Mariners trail the White Sox 15-14 in their all-time Cactus League series. That is unacceptable.