Author: The Baseball Zealot

Much has been made in the sports media of the Maddux/Clemens matchup aka “The 300-somethings” on Friday.

Not so much has been made of the combined season total of wins of both pitchers going into Friday’s game.

That would be a long skinny one.

As you probably know by now, the Cubs and Maddux won. I found the trailer to ESPN’s coverage of the game rather weird. Something to the effect of Maddux won Friday’s game but Clemens gets bragging rights.

This was due to Clemens going 2-2 against Maddux.

As Clemens made very clear in his post-game interview, that’s not why he’s being paid. At least he understands that if the media doesn’t.

On Friday, Livian Hernandez won his 3rd game of the year for the Nats allowing one run in 8 innings against the the Mets.

Not content to just contribute with his arm, Livian put out with the bat as well. He hit a solo shot in the 5th inning against Jae Seo.

The Brewers managed to win the last game against the Cardinals to avoid a three-game sweep. Facts of note:

-Despite the loss, the Cardinals managed to tie the team record for wins in April with 14. The 1963 Cardinals also won 14 in April.

-Chris Capuano, the winning pitcher for the Brewers, had not won a game since August of last year.

-Russell Branyan had a homerun in the game. Branyan, known for his knack for either hitting the long ball, striking out or drawing a walk, has 3 homeruns in the last 5 games. For the year, he’s hitting .326 with 5 homeruns.

-Finally, Albert Pujols has reached base 28 straight games dating back to last year.

Just got here and checked into the IAL Convention hotel. I’m the first one here so that gives me a chance to update the blog a bit.

To me, the one thing better than a weekend playing APBA is an APBA weekend topped off attending an MLB game.

So, this is a shout out to my buddy, TD who scored me a ticket to Sunday’s Sox/Tigers game. He just happened to have an extra ticket on hand and when he found out I was coming up, offered it to me. Thanks buddy!

TD and I are both Cubs fans but baseball is baseball and we’re willing to go root for the South-siders.

Mental note: Can’t forget to pack the camera.

Friday morning, bright and early, I take Amtrak for Chicago. This weekend is the May convention for the Illowa APBA League. The IAL is a simulation baseball league using the APBA baseball game. For details on what exactly the IAL is and what we do and why we do it, check out our About Page.

The ten of us plan on playing 30 games each this weekend My team, the Twin City Thunderchickens, was doing fairly well till our last series when we went 1-8. That put us at 18-21 and fighting to get back in top division.

Nevertheless, win or lose, we all have a good time. Rolling dice, talking baseball and hopefully winning a few games.

I’ll have access to the Internet at the hotel we are staying at so I plan to update the blog throughout the weekend. You may have to put up with some IAL convention talk mixed in about the real thing. I’ve intentionally not made thebaseballzealot.com an “APBA” or “IAL” blog but for weekends like these, exceptions have to be made. :)

Go Thunderchickens!