The first thing I wanted to talk about was the biggest baseball story of the week. That's right, naturally I'm talking about J.'s first T-Ball game. It was Saturday morning, and J. did pretty well. He got three hits and was able to field a couple of ground balls that came his way cleanly. He's on the team with his two best buddies from school (A. calls them "The Silly Trio".), and he was happy about that.

Watching the game was pretty funny. Lets just say that six year olds haven't quite mastered all the nuances of the game, like which base to throw to, when to run and such. The funniest thing is that when a ball gets hit over everyone's head, the whole team goes running after it.

The most important thing is that he had fun, and he'll pick up the finer points as time goes on.

Coming in a distant second as far as baseball stories is the Red Sox sweep of the Evil Empire in the Bronx this weekend. The first game was just a good, old fashioned beating, as the Sox won 11-2 with four home runs. The encouraging thing about that game was that Derek Lowe pitched 7 strong innings after getting knocked around by the Yankees the previous weekend following his rain-induced 10 day layoff. Sunday was a classic with the Sox winning 3-2 in 12 innings on three sacrifice flies. Finally, Pedro showed he's still Pedro today, as he pitched 7 scoreless innings, followed up by two innings of scoreless relief from Scott Williamson. Manny supplied all the offense the Sox needed with a two run homer. The bullpen is working on a 24 and 2/3 inning scoreless streak. It's nice not having to quake in fear every time the manager calls for the bullpen, which was pretty much the case for most of last season.

I've been watching the Braves-Marlins game on ESPNHD. Dontrelle Willis started for Florida. I love watching him pitch. He just gave up his first two earned runs of the 2004 season tonight (in his fourth start). He pitched six innings and turned it over to the bullpen with a 2-2 tie, only to watch the reliever promptly give up a bases loaded triple to J.D. Drew. I love watching Willis pitch. He's so young, yet he really seems to know what he's doing out there.

The car buying saga ends tomorrow, as I go to buy my new Honda Element. I've done all my research on the Internet, got my price figured out (and I'm quite willing to walk out if they don't meet my price) and I've got alternative financing lined up if the dealer doesn't come up with an attractive rate. It's so much easier to go into a car dealer armed with good data with the Internet. Everything is out there, from dealer invoice and wholesale prices, to the best loan rates, to descriptions of the tricks dealers try to drive up the price. I'll let you know how things go.