Welcome to this brave new world. This is just a test.I repeat this is just a test.All I know is that we British would never launch a major project without making sure everything would run smoothly.

I feel that ice is slowly melting. (or very quickly melting if it's in Phoenix). Either way, what other sport in the world could make me want to set the alarm for 3 a.m. to watch a game between two teams that I don't even follow.

I guess it's because the game itself has become so redolent of the end of Winter that it evokes these kinds of feelings. What is even more incredible is that this first game of the season is gradually becoming an international affair, almost as though humanity were emerging from it's collective slumber to the call of balls and strikes.

It was somehow fitting that the Olympic flame was lit on the same day as the season opener, because I think we all began to feel a little warmer.

Play ball!!

In my constant attempt to become more like God (I already move in a mysterious way) having giveth I shall now taketh away.

In my last post I praised MLBlogs for providing a link on the MLB Home Page,so I was even more impressed that they later announced that there would be links to  blogs from the individual teams pages. Unfortunately these links are solely (so far) to official blogs. Thus D-Backs fans are offered the opportunity to peruse Daron Sutton's blog (which he updates once every two weeks) rather than the, quite frankly, excellent array of D-Backs blogs from "unofficial" sources. I guess that it's just possible that some unsuspecting person will click on my blog and decide to never watch another ball game for the rest of their lives, but I think it's a chance worth taking. Let's hope the folks at MLBlogs loosen their ties and relax a little.

Incidentally, although they continue to refer to blogs as "communities" please be aware that this blog is in no way a "community". I prefer to think of it as a Stalinist dictatorship in which all dissidents will be ruthlessly crushed. Enjoy!!

It is true to say that I have not been overly impressed by the way in which MLBlogs is run. However, one of my many suggestions has now been taken on board (I assume that this blog is read daily in the offices of MLB) and there is now a more conspicuous link to MLBlogs from the MLB Home Page. Admittedly the link is near the bottom of the page to the left, but the idea of a quote from a particular blog is a good one. I'm not expecting anything in the way of controversy from these quotes and you can rest assured that I will refuse to alter the content of my hard-hitting blog in a desperate attempt to secure this coveted position.

On an unrelated note; is it just me or does Bud Selig look even more handsome this year? 

As the new season approaches it behoves us to look back at some of the great figures from the game of baseball, both on the field and off. And surely there has been no greater,or braver, writer on the game than Lewis Carroll. As we all know at the time of his greatest work baseball was banned in England due to the belief that Americans were "loud and stupid" (this was later proven to be true by intensive scientific research, but at the time it was mere supposition) thus Carroll was forced to disguise his love for the game in a series of allegories that still, to this day, incite debate and controversy in locker rooms across the country.

No mere blog can do justice to his wide range of subjects, but below are just a few quotes that resonate through the ages;

"Sentence first, verdict afterwards." Carroll felt that the Mitchell report was a travesty of justice. 

"If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later." Carroll also had little time for players who took steroids. 

"Begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end;then stop"  This was Carroll's rather simplified version of the rules of baseball that he submitted during his testimony of "The Great Baseball Trial of 1856"

"His answer trickled through my head like water through a sieve" Carroll hated interviewing Barry Bonds.

"I have proved by actual trial that a letter that takes an hour to write,takes only about three minutes to read" Carroll foresaw the lot of the MLB Blogger with startling accuracy.

"Twinkle twinkle little bat, how I wonder where you're at! Up above the world you fly, like a tea-tray in the sky" Carroll's stint as hitting coach for the Kansas City Royals' lasted less than three hours.

"No good fish goes anywhere without a porpoise" Carroll's idea of an overweight male dance group for the Marlin's was derided at the time.

Curtsey whilst you're thinking what to say.It saves time" Tim McCarver was baffled by Carroll's answer to what he had learned during his time in the game.

"I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then" The famous opening sentence to Carroll's searing expose of opium use in baseball (later made into the hit film "Freaky Friday").

"....if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be? You'd be nowhere! Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream." Carroll's belief that MLB will cease to exist once Bud Selig "wakes up" is now widely accepted to be true.

Just a quick word of praise for the performance artist Brian McNamee; his recent masterpiece "Asleep At The Wheel" was both personally courageous and a shocking indictment of MLB's negligence during the steroid era. I hope to see more work from this exciting new talent.

A recent report has shown that teams who play in red have a greater chance of winning games than teams who wear less "aggressive" colors, incidentally a report such as this seems to come out about every 3 years (presumably it takes this amount of time to get research funding). This winning record is largely due to the fact that red is "a sexually-selected signal of male dominance".

This explains why the D-Backs negative run differential did not prevent them from winning the NL West last year; these guys are now so damned sexually attractive they are virtually unbeatable. It also explains why the Red Sox won the World Series and why Cincinnati are such a dominant team.

In other news there was delight here in Vancouver this week when the official airport of the 2012 Vancouver Olympics was unveiled. The choice is, wait for it, Vancouver Airport! This shock decision means that I have lost the substantial amount of money that I placed on this honor going to Sky Harbor.

Matt, over at Diamondhacks, has recently complained about the standard of the player's blogs coming out of the recent trip to China, arguing that they don't really capture the excitement or history of the occasion. Needless to say I completely disagree with this view, and my convictions were strengthened when I happened to come across a long lost piece of journalism. It's now a sadly forgotten fact that Heath Bell was one of the first newspaper reporters at the scene of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and below I reprint his Pulitzer Prize winning piece from that fateful day in 1989.

"Germany is really nice and the people have been great. Today I rode on the tram system, everybody seemed really excited. The trams are really nice. Yesterday I had a hot dog, but it wasn't as nice as the hot dogs in America. I've tried lots of German food. I feel I really understand Germany now. It's been really nice".

Great writing doesn't age does it?

Everybody is going to China to play sport these days. It's very much the thing to do. In the UK there was controversy recently when future Olympic athletes were asked to sign a form promising that they would not criticize the Chinese government's record on human rights.Eventually this request was withdrawn, but it indicates the problems inherent in this kind of enterprise (we want their money so we have to be careful what we say).

MLB is clearly going down the non-controversial line, but there are still people risking their lives to oppose the Government. I understand the arguments from both sides and I'm not naive enough to think that Trevor Hoffman has the political gravitas to change the world. I just hope that MLB doesn't portray China as some kind of burgeoning Disneyland just because it's an "untapped market".

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I know that the Roger Clemens' steroid issue has been done to death, but I came across a quote from "Macbeth" today that I think has resonance;

"I am in blood

Stepped so far that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o'er"

Shakespeare is always the "go to guy" for baseball quotes, including my favorite from the final scene of King Lear

"thou must ne'er be thrown out at third

on thy first or third out"

That's as true today as it was then.

After nearly 30 minutes of thought I have come up with my template for a one game knockout competition for baseball (see previous post). This would include the thirty MLB teams plus 34 minor league teams (decided by the previous years standings).

A random draw would be made, with no seedings, meaning that the D-Backs could draw the Dodgers or the Las Vegas 51s (given America's geography I will reluctantly agree to an East/West split in the draw).Games can be scheduled around the regular league season. It would only take 4 game days to bring the teams down to the final 4, the "semi-finals" and the final would then be played in the days currently reserved for the All Star game (which would go).

The advantages are these;

-a chance to see the big teams be humbled

-a chance to see the big teams in small parks

- teams with no chance of making the play offs could have something to play for

-minor league games take on more meaning as they are playing for the chance to play in next seasons competition

The disadvantages are these-

-none

Now if I can just think of a title for the competition that the acting Commissioner will like.....

In other news I was shocked to find that Eric Weiner the author of a New York Times best selling book "The Geography of Bliss" (are any books not New York Times best sellers?) traveled the world looking at the happiness of the populations, and which city did he nominate as the unhappiest? Slough!!! He writes;

"Slough is a treasure trove of unhappiness, buried beneath a copious layer of gloom.The colors range from deeper to lighter shades of gray. The people seem Grey too and slightly disheveled."

I may have left the Sceptered Isle but this will not stand. I , for one, have never been "slightly" disheveled in my life. If I am disheveled I go the whole way and so do my former neighbors. 

Tonight is the last episode in the fifth and final series of the criminally under watched "The Wire". Without doubt it's the finest TV series ever made and if you've never seen it I urge you to get the whole thing on DVD, there are no bad episodes but Series 4 is about as good as television will ever get.

Barack Obama has cited "The Wire" as his favorite show and his campaign hit the rails slightly this week with the resignation of adviser Samantha Power. I have mixed feelings abut this as Power wrote the rather brilliant book "A Problem From ****- America in the Age of Genocide" and I was looking forward to her advising on foreign policy,but I was also pleased that this gave me a chance to see the marvelous British political interviewer Jeremy Paxman again, here he is welcoming his editors attempt to get viewers to send in their own news items.

Obama started the campaign as the underdog an it's been underdogs all the way in the British FA Cup this year (it's soccer) culminating in Russian Billionaire owned Chelsea being beaten by lowly Barnsley;this is akin to a low level Triple A team knocking the Yankees out of the play-offs, and I often think that one thing missing from American sport is the opportunity for the mighty to be humbled by teams from a much lower strata of the game.

And finally, I hope that the reader will note the seamless manner in which I have linked three entirely disparate subjects.

I'm sure that at some time or other everyone who writes on here as been the victim of the dreaded "asterisk machine" which permits some words to be published and makes others strictly verboten. Here then is a brief but useful list of what is allowed and what is not;

blow is ok-su*k is not.

retard is ok-mor*n is not.

screw is ok- f*** is not.

fascist is ok-n*zi is not.

racist is ok-h*nky is not.

male genitalia is ok-d*ck,c*ck,pric* and p*nis are not.

So remember, when making a comment it's permissible to call someone a racist, a fascist and a retard, but not a n*zi,a pric*, or a m*ron.

In the latest of my critically acclaimed series "Sporting Events That Americans Probably Don't Know About" I deal with the, rich with comic potential, N*zi occupation of the Soviet Union.

The irony is that the Ukrainians were in many respects welcoming of Hitler's troops as an escape from the tyranny of Stalin, but once the brutal regime of the German's became apparent the mood quickly changed. The top soccer team of the day were Dynamo Kiev and, despite being disbanded many of the players (who were released prisoners of war) gathered at the huge "Bakery number 3" and began to search out their former team mates in order to form a new squad.

Their first game (under the name of FC Start) was against a team run by a powerful N*zi sympathizer and, despite working incredibly long shifts at the bakery and being forced to play in work clothes and boots, they won the game 7-2. They subsequently went on a long winning streak beating Hungarian and Romanian army teams that had N*zi support. These results had a huge impact on the morale of the people of Kiev and when FC Start defeated a German army team 6-0 things began to get serious. The occupiers were not happy to see "the Master Race" being humbled in this manner.

On August 9th 1942 FC Start played a German Luftwaffe side in what has become known as "The Game of Death" (Fox Sports now have copyright on this title). Before the game an SS Officer entered the FC Start dressing room and announced that he was the referee for the game and advised that rules must be followed and that the opponents should be greeted "in our fashion".

The players were all too aware that this meant that they must give the N*zi salute before the game (I suspect that they also doubted the neutrality of the referee). No-one knows what discussions occurred in that dressing room but on the field, at the moment they were expected to give the salute the players instead brought their arms to their chests and shouted a Soviet slogan.

The game began, and as expected, the referee ignored blatant fouls by the German team. Despite this FC Start went in at half-time 2-1 up. Another SS Officer then entered the dressing room and explained that they must not win this match.

The game ended with FC Start winning 5-3, and, in a final humiliation for the German's, an FC Start player rounded their goalkeeper and, with an open goal to kick the ball into, turned around and kicked it back towards the center of the pitch.

The player's did not celebrate at the end of the game and there was chaos in the stands as guard dogs were loosed onto the Ukrainian crowd.

Revenge came slowly. FC Start played one more game (and won) but then German soldiers arrived at the bakery with a list of players. They were arrested,tortured and sent to a nearby labor camp. Three of the players escaped from the camp, the rest were either shot or "disappeared".

Of course history exaggerates the deeds of heroes for it's own purpose and as one of the survivor's said "The death of these players is no different to all the other deaths",and maybe he is right, but some deaths come to stand for more, and when modern athlete's speak of "pressure situations" I think we need to keep it in context.

(Incidentally I can't decide if it's ironic that MLBlogs wn't let me use the word N*zi).

Nothing heralds the end of Winter quite so evocatively as the sound of bat on ball; except perhaps the sound of buttock abscesses being squeezed. And nothing heralds the arrival of a new season quite so much as a blog entry about the upcoming campaign. In that spirit, here's a quick look at the major issues faced by the D-Backs in 2008.

1) Hitting- there's no way that they can repeat last season's escapology in so many tight games, and there is a lot of reliance being placed on the premise that the young hitters will improve this year. If they do we're home free, but any kind of sophomore slump and it's going to be a hard season.

2) Pitching- If Randy stays fit and Haren is the Haren he was in Oakland, then we could have one of the best pitching line ups in the league. If Randy breaks down and Haren turns into one of those Oakland duds then we're looking at Doug Davis as our number 2 pitcher. I find it almost inconceivable that Randy will pitch a full season and the "Oakland Dud Phenomenon" is in danger of becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.

3) Team Chemistry- I know less than nothing about the NBA but it's clear that the arrival of Shaq has upset something at the Suns. Similarly the loss of Tony Clarke could have an effect on the Diamondbacks; it was a consistent theme last year that his presence was vital in the dressing room with the younger players. Team chemistry is an indefinable thing and the D-Backs definitely had it, hopefully Bob Melvyn has found a way to bottle it.

4) Complacency-It's rare for a teams batting line-up and pitching rotation to be quite so obvious as it is for the D-Backs this year. The coaching staff have to make it a priority to ensure that the young players carry over their attitude from last season rather than settling into the comfort zone.

There are enough things that can go wrong to worry the fans. But Arizona is at minimum a .500 team and if things go well should win the NL West again.