Spring Training Game I : Royals at Rangers

BASEBALL IS BACK!

BASEBALL! BASEBALL! BASEBALL!

Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.

With apologies to the Craig Calcaterra and Rob Neyer camp, we’re going to lead with Field of Dreams (also, I feel pretty comfortable in the company of Joe Posnanski and others).

The 2017 season kindof begins today with a friendly derby with the Surprise Stadium sharing Texas Rangers.

Here’s the first lineup of the spring

Of course, being Spring Training, these lineups won’t matter past about the third inning. Earlier this week, I think Max already stole the Whose Line joke I wanted to make about the lineups being made up and the points not mattering anyway.

Looking ahead, here are the Royals starters for this week: Josh Staumont (Sat), Kyle Zimmer (Sun)*, Jason Vargas (Mon), Danny Duffy (Tues), Nathan Karns (Wed), and Chris Young (Thurs).

*if he doesn't fall out of bed, choke while eating breakfast, fall in the shower, injure his arm while putting on his shirt, stab himself with his car keys, have his car hit by falling cacti, break his hand opening the stadium door, poke himself with his uniform hanger, gouge out an eye while putting on his hat, or trip on the way out to the bullpen and/or pitching mound

As there’s no radio or tv today, but you can hear it on Gameday Audio.

Here is some Spring Training related content you may have missed:

• We have a whole Spring Training 2017 section at RoyalsReview
• Spring Training TV and Radio Schedule
• Spring Training roster
• “Everything” you need to know about Spring Training
• Spring Training Pictures are fun
• I’m also going to Newkirk the three part series I did about going to Spring Training a couple of years ago: (part 1) (part 2) (part 3).

There’s no recap, either, so, yeah, this is all kindof bare bones today.

But: BASEBALL! BASEBALL! BASEBALL! BASEBALL IS BACK!