It is 3:19 pm on Monday May 19th and all I can say is WOW.  Sorry I have not updated in a long time but I have been so busy with the season this is the first chance I had to write down what has been going on.

We will start with last Monday which saw me and the staff getting ready for opening night.  We went around the park making sure everything was set to go and I ran a practice broadcast to make sure it worked and everything went smoothly.  So we were set to go for Opening Night on Tuesday.

On Tuesday I began my offical career as a professional baseball broadcaster.  What I do before the game is print out rosters for fans and media, I prepare all the stats for the media so they have it and I can use it for my broadcast, I go and talk to both managers to get the starting lineups, I run the commercials during the broadcast, do a pre game interview with our manager, and then I broadcast.  It is pretty wild.  The first broadcast was an awesome way to begin my career.  We won the game in the bottom of the 9th inning on a walk off double!!!  So I got to call a walk off victory in my first professional game.  How crazy is that.

Our 2nd game took place the next day at 11 am as it was a special kids day.  I was so wired from the previous night I only got like 2 hours of sleep but was ready to go for the early start.  We lost but the nice thing about that game was that I got the whole night and afternoon off.  I ended up taking a brief nap during the day and then from 7 to 12:30 in the morning I sat at the hotel bar with our manager and asst. coach just drinking beers and watching the NBA Playoffs.  That was pretty cool and I really felt like I was starting to fit in.

We finished off the first series on Thursday as we lost the series to Amarillo.  After we scored 7 runs in the first game we only managed 3 in the other two.  It was not a happy time here as we were not expecting to be 1-2 early on.

On Friday we kicked off our 2nd series taking on the Harlingen White Wings.  we were trailing 8-1 and decided to play long ball late in the game to cut the lead to 8-7 going to the bottom of the 9th.  We had two runners on base with 1 out and our 4 and 5 hitters up and we couldn’t get the job done.

Saturday we pounded out 12 runs in a 12-1 blowout.  We just went and destroyed the opposing team.  It was just domination.

After the games on Friday and Saturday I went out with our Asst GM Albert and his family.  We had a blast just chilling out and drinking beer.  It was such a great time.  It was cool hanging out after hours too where we don’t have to be worried about being so formal.

On Sunday I called what was possibly one of the weirdest innings I have ever seen in baseball.  The first batter for Harlingen had a 1-2 count and was complainning about the strike zone.  He got ejected as well as a player on the bench and the manager.  It went on for 5-10 mintues.  We got confused in the press box cause instead of a pinch hitter batting the 2nd hitter came up and hit a home run.  I later found out that the batter was called out on strikes because he refused to step back in the batters box.  Then with 2 runners on  a player for Harlingen hit a fly ball to the right fielder and he dropped the ball.  But the base umpired ruled that it was an infield fly even though it was not even close.  The runners did not tag up so we tried for the double play by appealing to first base and the runner was called out.  Then Harlingen got upset with the outcome and complained and then the umpires discussed what happened.  The final ruling was that the batter was out on an infield fly and if we had appealed to 2nd it would have been a double play.  But we appealed to the wrong base and you only get the chance to do it once so that is why the runners stayed on 2nd and 3rd.  It was a very confusing inning and if you want to hear it you can listen to the archive of our game.  It was nuts.  We ended up winning which made it all better.

Today we have an off day before we head to a 3 town 9 game road trip.  Now I had no clue what kind of bus we would be taking, but I found we are getting a luxury sleeping bus.  Every seat turns into bed and has a tv with sattelite tv as well as a dvd player.  It is going to be sweet.  I hope to update this sometime on the road so you can see how life is like on the road.