April 13 thru 16
- Lugnuts 3 games, Whitecaps 1
- Lugnuts are 7-5 (.583)
- First place, 1/2 game ahead of the Wizards
Mark Quinn and Carlos Beltran collided on the first play of the game last night, and the Journal believes they will be out for a few days. A strange series; the first game was well-played, the second was silly, the third was awful (9 errors), and the last started with an injury. Welcome to the low minors, Lansing.
Our team is leading the league, as a team, in nearly every hitting category. Can’t say the same for the pitching. Treanor and Hallmark are at or near the top of the individual categories; Pat’s tied with four others for the stolen base lead. (Not bad for a catcher.)
I’m starting to recognize the team without resorting to the scorecard; now things get interesting. Coffee’s swing’s prettier than his statistics. Treanor throws really hard. Key’s fun to watch; I like watching sidewinders.
The weather’s still bad, though not as bad as last week. My crocuses have blossomed; I expect daffodils any day. It’s still too early to tell about the team. Stay tuned.
This one’s better. Finally it sounds like I’ve got something to say.
As things worked out, Quinn would soon be back with the team, but Beltran would never return to the Lugnuts. Instead Carlos would be assigned to Spokane when the short-season leagues returned in June. So his Lansing career consisted of 11 games, and 43 at bats.
Since the injury game was played in Old Kent Park, we didn’t see the collision. At the time, of course, we didn’t know both players would eventually play major league ball. We’d heard quite a bit about Beltran’s raw talent, though.
I’d be invited to write an article for the Lugnuts’ yearbook before the 1998 season; it was about the major league career prospects for the first two Luggies classes. I proved a poor prophet. For Carlos I predicted a long career (got that right) as a fourth outfielder (got that wrong).
“The Journal,” I wrote here. I did that pretty consistently. Whenever I said Lansing State Journal in these notes I probably meant Joanne Gerstner, who’d been hired by the local paper to cover the Lugnuts. She did an excellent job during her time at Lansing, then moved to the Detroit News. These days she’s a free-lancer, and an advocate for women sports writers. She plays competitive tennis, too.
Here’s the first of what will prove to be regular updates about our gardens. Those of you who follow me on Flickr (or Facebook) won’t be surprised I wrote about flowers.
In the event you’ve just stumbled onto this entry, here’s an explanation of what I’m up to.