Baseball's Opening Day

While the power did go out while I was watching the NCAA men's basketball national championship game, I fortunately did have power for most of baseball's Opening Day. Opening Day is one of my favorite days of the year because it means that baseball is back. There is optimism with almost every team and everything seems so pure. I love all the day games to open the year with huge crowds; it makes me feel like I've gone back in time to when all games were during the day. Although my San Francisco Giants were playing an evening game, that didn't stop me from watching most of the game. Tim Lincecum was sharp in pitching seven innings of shutout baseball en route to a 5-2 Giants win at the Houston Astros. I was interested to see that John Bowker has apparently won the starting right field job. I've always liked his stroke from the plate ever since his first call up. I hope he keeps putting it together; I think he has a lot of upside. He contributed today with an RBI single in the second inning as the Giants pushed three across in that inning against Astros starter Roy Oswalt. Brian Wilson came on late to pick up his first save of the year. Game 2 of the series is tomorrow night in Houston at 6:05 p.m. MT. It is available via MLB Extra Innings and mlb.tv. The Giants (1-0) will start Barry Zito and the Astros (0-1) counter with Wandy Rodriguez. It was a good start to the season for the Giants today and that was helped out even more by the fact that the rival Los Angeles Dodgers lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates 11-5.