Watching the White Sox and Diamondbacks late last night on tape delay really fired me up. It finally dawned on me that real baseball is almost here, something I'm still not prepared for, but nevertheless am looking forward to. The most anticipated Royals season since 2004 gets started in two days. Incredible.

The Royals take on the Brewers tonight in Milwaukee for no apparent reason. Let's just hope no one gets injured. I'll be curious to see what the attendance in Wisconsin is.

• I believe it was during one of the very first Spring Training games that I made the now infamous comment that I liked Jason Smith's "pop off the bench". Well, as NyRoyal points out in the diaries, Smith was a real Big Bite at the plate this spring, slugging .711 in 47 plate appearances (get it?). No, I'm not suggesting he should become our latest cause, but there's something to be said for having a guy like Smith around as a utility player. Especially when your starting shortstop is Tony Pena Jr.
• If you haven't checked out Mellinger's blog recently, there are about four good recent posts worth reading, including an interesting look back at the Beltran trade. Supposedly, at one point Michael Young and Hank Blalock were on the table.
• Early tomorrow morning the new Royals Review will be born. Be afraid. I'll be sad to see this version of the site go. For better or worse, I've grown used to it. Honestly, I see positives and negatives to the new site design, but I'll ultimately defer to the professionals, who strongly believe in 2.0's merits. I do think that the comments and game threads will be better, if nothing else. I am less excited about the avatars and seemingly wasted space and additional clutter. Basically, I'm a words person and consider walls of text hot. If you are curious, check out just about any other SBN baseball blog, and you'll see the new format. I'll mention this again tomorrow, but I strongly encourage viewing the site in wide format.
• Bugs and Cranks looks at raising a daughter in Cardinals territory.