The Arizona Rookie League Championship for ’08 saw the AZL Angels (first half winners) host the AZL Giants (second half winners) at Tempe Diablo Stadium. It was the usual sparse crowd for such games even though they featured the great stars of tomorrow including Boster Posey, Wendell Fairley, Craig Ziegler, Matthew Crawford and a handful of others.

The Giants won 4-2 with a close finish thanks to a ninth inning fly ball that got lost in the lights. Please note an error in the video that was a bad roster read: The Giants pitcher was Javier Hernandez not Raul Burgos. I suppose I could have done some post audio work, but it hardly seemed worth it.

What better way to spend a hot Sunday morning in August in Scottsdale—throwing tomatoes at one another. Sponsored by Sol y Sambra, a local restaurant, this event is a replicable of one that happens in Spain at the end of the tomato harvest. It’s supposed to be all in fun, but it sure was a great way to get out a lot of aggression. Splat!

Our day started our fairly miserably by the beach on North Padre Island but it turned around once we left the place and headed down to the bay front of Corpus Christi with the eventual destination of Whataburger Field, the home of the AA Texas League Corpus Christi Hooks. The Hooks were hosting the Frisco Roughriders, and it was mini trashcan night.

The park is magnificent in its setting, attention to detail, atmosphere and fan fun/friendly atmosphere. The Hooks won 9-4 in an entertaining but somewhat raggedly played game (five errors). The key player for the Hooks was third baseman Chris Johnson, a former 4^th Round pick out of Stetson. He hit a three-run homer which was the catalyst for turning things around.

After the game, there was a strange ball toss event as fans could buy a ball for $1 and the groundscrew put buckets on the field and fans had to land one in the bucket to win a cash prize. Sadly, my ball fell several feet short of the target.

Our Lone Star Summer has taken us to some strange places, and today we wound up in North Padre Island which is the Gulf of Mexico beach side of Corpus Christi. No one will mistake it for Cannes or even Destin, Florida, but lots of folks come here to enjoy the beach. About 10 miles down the road you hit Port Aransas, a fishing village that has some restaurants and the normal touristy stuff. Between here and Port Aransas, there appears to be some newer condos and homes on the beach.

So, I ask, what’s with this driving on the beach? As someone who grew up going to the Jersey Shore, I can assure you driving on the beach is as far from my frame of reference as possible. To each his own. Wonder if AAA will take calls to dig your car out of the sand?

Our Lone Star Summer has taken us to some strange places, and today we wound up in North Padre Island which is the Gulf of Mexico beach side of Corpus Christi. No one will mistake it for Cannes or even Destin, Florida, but lots of folks come here to enjoy the beach. About 10 miles down the road you hit Port Aransas, a fishing village that has some restaurants and the normal touristy stuff. Between here and Port Aransas, there appears to be some newer condos and homes on the beach.

So, I ask, what’s with this driving on the beach? As someone who grew up going to the Jersey Shore, I can assure you driving on the beach is as far from my frame of reference as possible. To each his own. Wonder if AAA will take calls to dig your car out of the sand?

It was a true Austin experience: Here we are, walking from the juice bar to our car at Whole Foods HQ at 6^th and Lamar in Austin when we come across a live music session ready to start. The performer is George Ensle, a local singer-songwriter whose melodies and lyrics positively enchant. As his website says, he paints pictures with his words, and the pictures he paints make you smile and cry, sometimes at the same time.

It was an Austin thing, and the reason we moved here p/t. We left our place with no particular destination, just hoping to hear music. We were headed to the Elephant Room (jazz is not my producer’s cup of tea) so when it started raining, we dashed over to Sullivan’s a steakhouse (from the Del Frisco people) which has a small bar that features lives music. To our great delight, we discovered Adam McInnis a musician who, along with his large band (on a small stage) was absolutely memorable. We bought his demo CD (we now are gathering a collection of local artists) and will be seeing him on July 11, again at Sullivan’s. If you are in the area, do not miss him.

Yes, I know none of it makes any sense. We leave in a few days for what we are calling our Lone Star Summer. After years of silly summer trips to silly places, wasting a bunch of money, we purchased a second home in Austin, Texas. We leave this Wednesday (July 2) and are driving to Austin for an unspecified amount of time.  I know it makes little sense to go from one hot place to another (especially since Austin is both hot & humid), but to us it makes sense.

We’ll be driving via El Paso figuring we’ll make it there in one day and then reach Austin on day two. That gets us there in time for July 4^th. It will be a mix of work and fun for the summer including trips to South Padre Island, Corpus Christi and perhaps even San Antonio for a AA Texas League baseball game.

It will be an adventure filled with food, fun, new places and a lot of video. I am hopeful our Lone Star Summer invigorates my video activity which has been light for quite a while.

Stay tuned ya’all.

Wednesday nights are kinda slow in downtown Austin (relatively speaking) with music really hitting its stride Thursday night through Saturday. Along 6^th (North of Congress), we stopped into a few places and happened upon a band called Wilson playing at the open air venue of The Belmont restaurant. Here’s their rendition of “We Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Since the day we moved here, I have wanted to walk up 6^th Street to Whole Foods (about one mile) and look at all the restaurants along the way—and there are many. The one I have been dying to stop in to try is Hut’s Hamburgers, one of those places heralded by Jane and Michael Stern in their Roadfood site and books. To say the least, we were not disappointed.

We walked out the front door and headed two blocks down Colorado and there on the right side is Antone’s, the legendary Austin music venue. It was a quiet Monday night and it was Super Soul Monday, featuring Flyjack and Uncle Bruno. These two local bands were just fantastic as they played for close to three hours wit ha few songs in which members of one band jammed with the other. This was truly one of the great reasons we moved to Austin.

Having owned a second home before, we quickly learned that transportation costs can get out of hand. For starters, our new place is in the middle of everything in Austin—food, music, etc…--so we can either walk everywhere or take Capital Metro, a great local public transit system.

Where you can really rack up the expense is in getting to and from the airport. In Austin, however, for 50 cents, you can take the Airport Flyer (Capital Metro 100) from ABIA and you whisked into downtown or the UT campus in minutes.

Been a while since I have been at the video switch. Our first day in our new second home in Austin included visits to the two Saturday farmers markets, one down the street at 4^th and Guadalupe and the other out in Sunset Valley. And if you are the live music capital of the world, there would have to be music at the markets. At the Downtown Market there’s Brian Byrne and Borrowed Time; out in Sunset Valley, it was a fill in for one of the regulars, so I didn’t catch his name

Spring training came to an end with all the Arizona games starting an hour earlier to allow teams to make a quick get-away. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the 10-10 tie between the Cubs and Brewers seemingly went on forever. Because the teams play each other early in the season, neither used any of their regular pitchers (for the most part), so naturally it was a high-scoring affair.

A few notes: it was really cool seeing George Foster before the game, signing autographs alongside Fergie Jenkins. He looks as mean as the day he smacked more than 50 homers in a season (back went it meant something). Also, I will tell you that Kosuke Fukudome is the real deal. He has an arm like Ichiro and looks like he may have the pop of Matsui. The Cubs may have themselves a right fielder.  (The best once since Jim Hickman).

Sad to say Cubs fans, I think the Brewers are better than your boys this year. If the Brewers get any pitching, they will win the NL Central. They can mash.

Andruw Jones  is now patrolling center field for the Dodgers after playing his first 1,761 games with the Braves. He might be a solid addition, but he looks beefy in his Dodger Blues. ESPN says he’s 210—now way, he’s easy 225-240. 

I think about the first time I saw Larry Bowa:  he was a good field, no hit shortstop coming up through the Phillies ranks in the ‘70s.  In the minors, we was teamed with Denny Doyle and later found his calling when he was paired with Dave Cash as the Phillies double-play combo. Bowa, a former manager and coach, now is the third base coach with the Dodgers and is a true testament to what hard work can do for your career in baseball.

Well, it was history in the making when the Los Angeles Dodgers hosted the Los Angeles Angles in a stadium outside of Southern California. After 55 years in Vero Beach, Florida, the Dodgers are moving their spring training home to Arizona next year. As a warm-up, the Dodgers played the Angels in a game at the spring training home of the A’s who are in Japan getting ready to be slaughtered by the Bosox to open the season.

It was a huge crowd mostly filled with Dodgers fans who have been longing to see their team in spring training. A seven-hour drive versus a flight to Florida…you do the math.

It was semi-surrealistic to see the blue uniforms on a spring training field, and LA started most of their regulars except for the handful who are hurt. It was also really odd to see Joe Torre in an LA uniform wearing Steve Garvey’s old number.

The Angels look fairly formidable even without Vlad in the lineup. Torii Hunter is a huge addition to the team, and speaking of huge, Andruw Jones, the new centerfielder for the Dodgers, looks like he spent the offseason exercising the knife and fork.

Ah, one more note: with Nomar and Andy LaRoche on the disabled list, Blake DeWitt, one of the Dodgers top prospects is filling in at third base. He is a native of Sikeston, Missouri, the home of Lambert's, the top place to pig out in America (according to the Travel Channel).

You have to hand it to the folks in Austin; they can make a horrible flight delay enjoyable. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport has a program called “Music in the Air” at various locations throughout the terminal. While we waited for some nasty weather to blow through (which shut down DFW), we saw Michael Bellew perform at Highlands Lakes Bar by Gate 9.