First Pitch: Labor Day Weekend !!!

Well Gents, it's finally here...Opening Day ! The first pitch of a new season, where everything is new and fresh and everybody is in 1st place ! We have an interesting theme, which is kind of a combo theme. We have Expansion teams, 1st year franchise shifts and last year in their original home. It should make for a very interesting league as one can never tell just how the game engine will respond to teams that were this abysmal !

Here are the week # 1 matchups and my comments for the AL:

BAL @ KCA: Battle of franchises that shifted 1 year after each other. While their uniforms are brand new and their caps have a great looking orange Oriole, this team still resembles those second division St. Louis Browns squads. Bill Veeck sold the team, so it could move to Baltimore. Unfortunately the players came along too. Same can be said for the Kansas City A's. Connie Mack was cheap, then he got old, then his kids began to fight over who controlled the team. Eventually they just sold it and the new owners moved out of Philly, where they couldn't draw flies. The move to KC would ensure that the A's would never rise above second division status and become known as the Yankees farm team. Not until Charlie Finley took them over did they start to build from within. Unfortunately the fans of KC would never see the fruits of this plan since the franchise again up and moved...this time to Oakland.

WAS @ SEP: 1st in war, 1st in peace...last in the AL. That pretty much describes the tenure of the Senators in our Nation's Capital. In 60 years of action the Nats won 1 championship, and that was back in the 1920's. By 1960 the Griffith family had grown weary of D.C. and their aged ballpark and moving to Minneapolis was just right around the corner. Have no fear, expansion is here. The geniuses who ran the AL solved the problem by adding an expansion team to D.C. and letting the original Senators move. This band of castoffs and unknowns actually showed more promise than the group they replaced...at least for the short term. The Seattle Pilots were so bad they only existed for 1 year. Made popular by Jim Bouton's baseball tell all, Ball Four, the Pilots will be known as more than just a band of castoffs, but an eclectic bunch hopped up on greenies and looking to pound some Bud's. Ownership was so poor the team went into bankruptcy after the season ended and moved to Milwaukee on the sly when spring training ended. Tommy Harper did steal 70+ bases, which was incredible considering he hit in the .230's.

LAA @ KCR: The Angels might have been baseball's best expansion team ever. They were actually contenders in their 2nd and 3rd seasons and battled the heck out of the AL during their inaugural campaign. A little known fact is that they played their home games during that 1st season in LA's Wrigley field, which was the home of the original Home Run Derby TV show. Of course there is always a downside to such immediate success. That downside was the Mets and Colt 45's, who came the following season. They were given a smaller talent pool to choose from, since the existing owners were ticked off at how well the Angels fared. The Royals started play in 1969 and brought baseball back to KC after a 1 year hiatus after the A's abandoned KC for greener pastures on the West Coast. The Royals might not have been good in their opening campaign, but they had the right formula for building a sustained winner, as the franchise was a constant contender from the mid 70's through mid 80's.

MIN @ SEA: The Twins arrived on the scene via the moving van. Once the AL agreed to add an expansion team in Washington, the old Senators were free to leave provided they leave the name Senators. With their poor track record I don't think they cared at all. 60 years of bad baseball in D.C. translated to a decade of excellence in the Twin Cities. Constant improvement took place and the team won the the AL pennant 4 short season later and a couple of divisional titles at the end of the decade. The AL never likes to admit defeat, so as you've seen the pattern they gamefully return to failed cities with expansion teams. After a 7 year absence of baseball after the Pilots moved, the M's took the field in their new antiseptic domed stadium and proceeded to stink for the next decade and a half. Not much happened until the young phenom Griffey Jr. arrived 13 seasons after the franchise was created. Interestingly Diego Segui is the only player to have played for both the M's and the Pilots. He retired quickly after the '77 season concluded.