As I have gotten older I have come to realize that I was incorrect in my assessment that Christmas had anything to do with being the longest or shortest day of the year. I’ll also admit that I completely disagree with the scientists that claim that the longest day of the year is the summer solstice either. I think if you ask any baseball fan they will tell you that the longest day of the year is the day before Opening Day. This is the day just before all the hopes and dreams of a new baseball season come to fruition. Once Opening Day arrives and the season starts; the days seem to fly by. Although the baseball season lasts 162 games; each of those games goes by way too quickly. So why then does the day before the season last so long?

Too often there is a tendency for baseball fans to dwell on the fact that the season is 24 hours away. They are busy getting ready for the start of the season. There are seat cushions to retrieve from storage; peanuts and Cracker Jacks to pack; water bottles to refrigerate. Once the bags are packed you will need to find your scorebook and check to make sure that you not only have a pen but also a back-up writing device just in case your primary pen dies during the game. You’ll also need to find your game tickets and tear them out of your Season Tickets book and if you are lucky enough to have a parking pass it too needs to be packed. All of this packing and preparation focuses your mind squarely on baseball and as such builds up the anticipation which somehow makes time stand still. I am a firm believer that the key to time travel is somehow connected to the beginning of baseball season. Sure everyone thinks time travel is possible if you have a flux capacitor but as we saw in the three Back to the Future movies; time circuits get messed up and cause all kinds of problems especially around 1955.

So for the next 24 hours I’ll stand around staring at the clock swearing that time has somehow stopped dead in its tracks. I’ll call the Naval Observatory about a hundred times to make sure that the atomic clock has not somehow quit working. And I will wander aimlessly around the house wondering if I am the only one that is having a hard time functioning knowing that baseball is only a day away. Yeah this is definitely going to be the longest day of the year.

The first Cactus League game was just 11 short days after the official reporting date for pitchers and catchers so fans didn’t have to wait long to begin seeing their favorite players in action. The Diamondbacks opened Spring Training like they will open the regular season against the Colorado Rockies. There is an old adage that says, “be careful what you wish for”. For months I had wished that Spring Training would arrive and when it finally did, it seemed to last forever. Due to the World Baseball Classic that would occur this year; Major League Baseball extended Spring Training to nearly six weeks of games. The Diamondbacks typically have 1 off day per spring but because of the extended period this year they had four off-days. Baseball fans especially diehard baseball fans are not equipped to deal with their favorite team having so much time off and I found myself going through withdrawals. Clearly the length of Spring Training had its toll on the players as well. By the end, they were all ready to be done with the exhibition season and have the games start to count. It was especially bad for the Diamondbacks as they dropped their last 7 games. Not exactly the kind of momentum you hoped the team would carry into the regular season. I keep telling myself that Spring Training numbers and statistics don’t matter but when your team is getting pummeled and your favorite players stats are abysmal it’s sometimes hard to remember that this doesn’t count.

So today was the final day of Spring Training. The Diamondbacks held their last exhibition game at Chase Field. Like the other games this week they looked flat and at times very over matched. As I walked out of the stadium after the game I was grateful to have survived the Spring Training Marathon of 2009 and for the next 32 hours I will be praying that the struggles I saw over the past 6 weeks will magically disappear and be replaced by a team that plans to contend for the National League Western Division title over 162 games. I wish the season started tomorrow for the Diamondbacks.

The last time it was suggested that we have a “date night” I ended up getting drug to a craft show followed by dinner consisting of food arranged on the plated as a piece of art and concluding with a movie where the characters attempted to connect on an emotional level. Geez, you may as well strapped me to a chair and forced me to wear an “I heart Derek Jeter” jersey while watching reruns of the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series. I’m pretty sure that there was a clause in the Geneva convention banning such cruel and unusual punishment towards prisoners.

No if I was going to have to endure yet another “date night” then I wanted to make sure that I was in charge of the planning. Besides, as a husband you seem to get bonus points if you actually take the initiative on these things. So this morning before she left for work I gave her a hug and looked into her beautiful warning track colored eyes and proclaimed, “I thought maybe we could go out on a date tonight.”

The look on her face was equal parts excitement and fear. The closest thing I can compare this look to was when I found out Manny Ramirez was being traded last season. On the one hand I was glad he was no longer a Red Sox but on the other hand the last thing I wanted was to see those dreadlocks in Dodger Blue. So as my wife left out the door I began to make plans. The first thing I did was to make sure the kids would be taken care of. Nothing will destroy a date faster than trying to explain to your wife that you forgot all about the kids and that you are sure that they are perfectly fine locked in the house for the night. This is the frustrating part about being the husband; you don’t get credit for anything. After all I did remember to lock the kids in the house as opposed to locking them out of the house.

Once I had the children situation taken care of I was free to begin planning the perfect date. I thought we would start out by stopping by the fabric store since I know she loves that stuff. I needed some Sedona Red Cordura anyway so this would allow me to only have to make one stop to this anti-testosterone Mecca. After a short visit at the craft store we’ll take a short 18 mile drive to downtown Phoenix to a nice little romantic spot that I know. There we’ll have dinner and catch a show before coming home for hopefully some quiet time. On paper this sounds perfect. What woman would not want an evening like that? Now all I have to do is figure out which concession stand at Chase Field we’ll have dinner at tonight and whether I should splurge and get her something from the Team Shop as long as we are at the game. What could possibly go wrong? By the end of the night she is going to think she has married the perfect man. Who knows, if it goes well, I might take her to the game tomorrow afternoon too.

Over the next few seasons the Diamondbacks modified the fan loyalty program including renaming it “Diamondbackers”. They patched a few holes in the system such as requiring you to scan your game ticket along with your membership card so that at least you had to have a one-to-one match-up of tickets to members at the game. The prizes remained and there were even some very cool items such as Diamondbackers specific bobble head dolls, CD cases, hats, and my personal favorite the Diamondbacker’s dufflebags. Most importantly though was the continual accumulation of points awarded for each game. Those 10 points per game were something I looked forward to at every home stand. I think I liked that idea because it was a direct result of me being at the ballpark. I knew how many games I had been to based on the points. It’s really stupid when I think about it. Since I pretty much go to every game I just had to add a zero to the end of the game number and I would know but still it was the fact that the kiosk would remind me and anyone looking how dedicated a fan I was.

For the 2007 season the Diamondbacks changed the program. This in my opinion was a major mistake and one of the few things I regret the Diamondbacks ever doing. They went with an outsourcing company and the program was completely different. Points per game were awarded at a much lower level and the points were based upon ticket purchase rather than ticket used. They also began including dollars spent at specific concession stands (not all of them mind you, just a subset) and dollars spent at the team shop. You would think that someone such as myself would come out ahead since I go to every game, always eat at the stadium and rarely if ever leave without buying something at the team shop. Instead though it was a nightmare to try to manage and it was confusing to even attempt to guess where I was at with point totals. The system constantly lost points and I was always emailing back and forth to have points reinstated that suddenly disappeared. To top it off, the outsourced company went out of business and I was never able to redeem the points for anything.

After a brief hiatus a new program was introduced called the Fry’s Rewards Zone. This program was really part of the grocery store chain loyalty program. Although you could run your card at the ballpark and accumulate points there was no way to see how many points you really had or even if you had your card or had mistakenly grabbed your wife’s card. You were also granted points for buying specific grocery items but because the points were on a per card basis if my wife did the shopping I didn’t get credit for the points. There was no concept of family, ticket holder, or really anything like that. The points would accumulate during the season but it was nearly impossible to find out what your total was or what kinds of things you could spend your points on. It was further complicated by the fact that Fry’s had a similar program with the Phoenix Suns so you had no way of knowing if your points were going to a basketball account or baseball account. At the end of the season all the points were wiped clean and since I didn’t know where to go to redeem the points I basically lost all of them. It has been by far the most frustrating fan loyalty program I have ever seen. It’s sad that I am longing for the day when I could go to 3 games and get temporary Diamondbacks tattoos.

I was really hoping that the team would find an alternative for this program and reinstitute the Diamondbackers club where we could simply swipe our card and ticket and work toward baseball prizes. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case. We went to the grocery store last night and after swiping my Fry’s club card my receipt notified me that I had once again initiated the Diamondbacks Rewards program. I have no idea what that means exactly but I am guessing that will mean that I will swipe my card at the ballpark kiosk and then for the next 81 games wonder how many points I have and what that might be able to get me. Honestly, all I really want is a pin that says I am a loyal Diamondbacks fan, maybe a polo shirt, and be entered into a drawing to go out with the grounds crew and replace second base during the game and get to keep the base. I have the perfect spot picked out in the living room where I can mount second base. Come to think of it, this Fry’s program may have been developed by my wife since she commented that the last thing she wants is for me to have an opportunity to mount second base on the wall of her living room.

James Skelton was drafted out of high school by the Detroit Tigers in the 14th round of the 2004 amateur draft. In high school Skelton was an infielder but the Tigers projected him as a catcher and worked to build him into the successor to Ivan Rodriguez. Many Detroit Tigers insiders were shocked that the team would leave Skelton off their 40-man roster exposing him to the Rule 5 draft. Obviously the Arizona Diamondbacks were intrigued at his skill set and took a chance that Skelton could make the major league roster despite never playing above double-A.

Going into Spring Training you had to give Skelton the upper hand in nailing down the final roster spot on the Diamondbacks. After all, if he didn’t remain on the major league roster he would have to be offered back to the Tigers (after clearing waivers). That’s a lot of “if’s” to keep a player. Skelton was given every opportunity to try and make the team. The Diamondbacks not only liked what they saw of him behind the plate (including throwing out base runners from his knees), they liked his discipline in the batter’s box. General Manager Josh Byrnes and his staff put a lot of credence in statistical analysis and James Skelton projects into one of those high on-base percentage guys that Arizona could desperately use given the current line-up which has a propensity to strike out more often than walk. Unfortunately Skelton looked overmatched at the plate and struggled getting hits amassing only a ,150 batting average and showing very little power. It appeared that James Skelton was destined to go back to Detroit but then a deal was announced where the Diamondbacks would keep Skelton in exchange for RHP Brooks Brown.

Brooks Brown was a supplemental first round pick in the 2006 draft making him the 34th overall pick. He had been rated as the 15th overall prospect in the Diamondbacks farm system and was slated to return to Double-A Mobile to begin the 2009 season. Many in baseball described Brown as a solid pitcher that would ultimately be a back of the rotation starter. Brooks struggled during the 2008 season and this spring he seemed to lack velocity and displayed control issues at various times. Neither of these appear to be major concerns and the organization felt that Brown needed perhaps a little more seasoning at the Double-A level. So the question begs to be asked, why would the Arizona Diamondbacks trade a first round starting pitcher for a 14th round light hitting catcher/utility man?

My personal feelings on this is that looking over the Diamondbacks farm system it appears that most of the high ceiling prospects are pitchers meaning there is much more depth in that area. This is to be expected considering many of the highly touted prospects in the Diamondbacks organization have become regulars on the Major League roster leaving the farm system slightly drained. Arizona needs to have some depth in position players and trading a pitcher for position player might pay dividends later this season especially if Skelton can find his stroke in Mobile. With the departure of Juan Cruz, Brandon Lyon, and Orlando Hudson; Arizona has a plethora of draft choices in the first couple of rounds this June. The player development staff may have determined that the draft lacked depth at the catching position and this move could have been warranted.

At the present time it would appear that Skelton is blocked with Arizona having two young catchers already at the major league level in starter Chris Snyder and back-up Miguel Montero. With the Diamondbacks farm system somewhat depleted there are very few trading chips that could be used near the trading deadline in July if the Diamondbacks find themselves in need to make a play-off push. Having James Skelton at Double-A gives them a potential opportunity to trade either Snyder or Montero (specifically Montero) and still have some depth at catcher. With Snyder’s emergence as the full-time starter; having the luxury of a backup such as Montero may be too costly. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I happen to believe that Miguel Montero will be moved before the end of the season (along with at least 1 outfielder) and if that happens look to see James Skelton in a Diamondbacks uniform.

It is the man’s responsibility to first recognize the type of opponent he is facing and secondly to out-manage them turning the advantage to the home team. It took me a few years to get this down but ultimately I think I now have a handle on how to deal with this exact situation. Like any other skill it takes some level of talent but more importantly it takes hard work and dedication to play this game at the highest professional levels. And like Major League Baseball players, we have to prepare before the season starts. That means Spring Training. When I was younger and more naive I thought my skills alone would allow me to play at this level but I was quickly outmaneuvered and found myself sitting the bench with my wife. Now I am a seasoned veteran and know how the game is played. I prepare myself every day so that when it is my turn at bat I am ready. I have made myself notes and reminders and put them in various places so that I am constantly reminded of when birthdays and anniversaries are so I will never miss another one.

So today when my iPhone produced a popup reminder of an anniversary I sprung to action. On my way into work I stopped at the Hallmark store and bought a most romantic card I could find. At lunch I went to the florist and bought a dozen Sedona Red roses (you would be surprised at the stares you get when you try to match the color of flowers to your baseball hat). On the way home I stopped and bought a box of my wife’s favorite chocolates. I was clearly in the zone. There would be no way I was getting shut out of this game. I was just about to hit one out of the park.

As Trina came in I stood there smiling as I presented her with the gifts. I was about to bask in the warmth of being the most caring husband on the planet. Imagine my surprise when instead of hugs and kisses I was greeted with blank stares and a confused look. Could it be? Did my loving wife somehow forget our anniversary? These are the moments that husbands dream of. I mean think of all the paybacks you will have at your disposal if you have somehow turned the tables. My wife still looking confused asked, “what is all this for?”

Oh this is such a perfect moment. I tried hard to hold back the joy I was feeling. I just couldn’t do it, a smile beamed across my face as I said, “It’s our anniversary, did you forget?”

“Our anniversary is in June” my wife said in that tone that is usually reserved for when I suggest we paint the house Sedona Red or install a retractable roof. The smile on my face disappeared faster than a Brandon Webb sinker. But my iPhone came up with the reminder. I frantically grabbed my iPhone to verify that I was not crazy. Sure enough the reminder was tucked within its screen. As I re-read the message my face went the color of gray of the Diamondbacks away uniform.

“Happy Anniversary to the Arizona Diamondbacks! Opening Day for the Inaugural Season was March 31, 1998.” This message was of course met with a stern face followed by the traditional lecture where my wife constantly reminds me that the Diamondbacks are more important than she is and how I can somehow remember an anniversary for a baseball team but somehow forget when our wedding anniversary is. Did I mention how much I am starting to hate technology? Stupid iPhone; I am perfectly capable of getting into this much trouble without having a device helping me.

Beginning at 12:40 PM today I began looking at my watch realizing that Opening Day for the Arizona Diamondbacks is nearly upon us. We can no longer gauge the amount of time remaining in terms of months and we just surpassed being able to use weeks. The countdown is now a matter of days and if I really wanted to be crazy I could start quoting that there is less than 167 hours remaining. Of course when I start using three digit hours to express how close the season is my family starts freaking out.

It seems they may not share my level of enthusiasm to have baseball resume. There have already been secret meetings held in the living room where they discussed how they are planning to keep dad in line and reduce the number of games I will attend to a more reasonable level. We seem to have a disagreement on what exactly a reasonable level is. I thought reasonable was somewhere in the 162 game range while they tend to believe that 81 is still in the insanity range. I don’t even want to go into the episode where I suggested that we take the kids to Chicago the first of October to visit Trina’s family. I thought I was being quite thoughtful. Problem is that Trina doesn’t have family in Chicago. She has a sister in Indiana. Personally I thought Indiana was a suburb of Chicago so I should have gotten credit for at least being close. I think maybe my problem might have been when I suggested that he sister could come to Chicago and we could have dinner after the game.

I still challenge that I cannot be held accountable for my enthusiasm this time of year. With a mere 167 hours uh I mean 7 days until Opening Day you cannot help but be excited. We are about to embark on a wondrous 162 stage journey that will takes us to places we never could have imagined. And along the way we’ll bask in the sunlight of a spring afternoon and the stars that dot the summer sky. We’ll watch as players reach historical milestones and make each of us feel as though we are children again. With our days filled with news stories about what a horrible situation our country is in, we deserve that time at the ballpark when baseball erases the daily grind and helps us to remember everything that is right in the universe. With that outlook Opening Day can’t come soon enough as far as I’m concerned. Now where is that kid who is supposed to drive the DeLoren back to the future?

Unfortunately the truth is substantially more boring than that. The fact is that I have spent the better part of four months trying to get a handle on Now Hitting and how I could migrate it to a new server. Now Hitting began shortly after the Arizona Diamondbacks and went on line during the Inaugural Season. It began as a way to try and keep me sane (a noble yet unobtainable goal). At that time there was very little information online about the Arizona Diamondbacks and what did exist was spread across so many places that it took a tremendous amount of time to find it. This was very frustrating to me especially given the lack of good online tools to manage bookmarks and information. I would no sooner find a useful site then lose the address because I didn’t write down the URL correctly. So rather than take the easy route and create a bookmark utility I decided to take on the more difficult task of creating a centralized location I could go to get Diamondbacks information and historical facts.

I would love to say I did this as a way to earn a living and make enough money that I would never have to pay for season tickets again but I’d be lying. I’m not even smart enough to add advertising to the site. Instead I did it quite selfishly to keep track of details I thought were useful. Along the way I opened the site up so that others could likewise access the data I had collected.

The site has gone through several iterations usually because I had outgrown the tools I was using or in the case of the last update because the Diamondbacks changed their color scheme and I felt guilty having a Purple and teal site when the team was now Sedona Red.

At the conclusion of the 2008 season I realized that these various migrations and growth periods in the site history have made the data less than coherent even to me. I therefore decided that instead of migrating the information to a new server intact I would instead go through each page and determine where the information should go or at least where it made more sense. I’ll be the first to admit that I am not the most organized person in the world. I have to have a special drawer just to put my car keys otherwise I can’t remember where I put them. So for me to take on a task of actually organizing the information on the web site was well outside my comfort zone. The other issue I neglected to take into consideration was the fact that I had accumulated a lot of informational crap over the past 14 years. I vastly underestimated how many pages of information I actually had on NowHitting. I had guessed somewhere around 200 pages and figured it would take me until the World Series ended to complete the data review. As I started digging into the site I found that I had underestimated the number pages slightly. By slightly I mean by orders of magnitude. I soon realized that I had over 1,500 pages of information stored on NowHitting in various formats and probably double that with the data I had locally that had not quite made it to the web site.

Going through each page and trying to put it into a usable format became a much more time consuming task than I had anticipated. So for the past several months I have been wading through volumes of Diamondbacks trivia trying to put things into places where 1) I could find it, and 2) where I could update it where necessary. Instead of getting done by the end of the World Series, the new and improved goal was to finish the migration before Opening Day. It’s questionable whether even this is a realizable goal but it is a lot closer than my first estimate. I’ve now consolidated a bulk of the information and I have been testing the new site along with a few loyal friends and fans. Over the next week I will be backing up the existing NowHitting site and moving it to an off-line archive. Once that is completed I will move the new site redesign into its place. My goal is still to finish before first pitch on Opening Day but it may require a few all-nighters to meet that goal. As for Diary of a Diehard, you should soon begin seeing more consistent postings leading up to the season. I’ll end with one of Mark Twain’s more famous quotes “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”; I’m still here and that in itself is probably not the best news you have ever heard.

Today I awoke and the sun was peaking over the horizon. The first rays of light spread across the cloudless sky. The darkness of night crept back into the shadows replaced with the thoughts of a new day. This wasn’t just any day though; this was the beginning of a new chapter. One that held the hopes and dreams of baseball fans everywhere. Today was the day when winter is finally over. We no longer had to wallow in the failures of our teams. Today is “next year”. Today is the first day that we promised everyone it would be different. Players who struggled had their failures erased. They were once again placed on the pedestals and touted as the piece that would lead the team to the promised land of the play-offs. Today is the day when all the moves the General Manager and the front office stepped onto the field and brought with them the hopes and dreams of millions of baseball fans. This is the brightest day of the year for baseball. All the talk of steroids, cheating, and Congressional hearings are no longer at the forefront of our minds. Instead we’re only interested in freshly chalked lines, beautiful green expanses of grass perfectly manicured, and the aromas of hot dogs, peanuts, and popcorn. This is what baseball fans live for; this is the start of Spring Training.

Although pitchers and catchers reported to camp 11 days ago and position players arrived a week ago it is today that fans look at as the official beginning of Spring Training. Today the players will don their uniforms, tie their cleats and run out onto the field enthusiastically cheered by the diehard fans that have made the journey from across the country to be with their team. This is the first day of Spring Training games and couldn’t come a moment too soon. Baseball is back and all seems right with the world once again.

The timing of the games was also something of a mystery. With Cactus League spring training in full swing (no pun intended); teams were fractured with some of the players playing in the World Classic while others were back in camp trying to prepare for the regular season. It made player development and preparation difficult and led to other potential issues. Many of the players who participated in the World Baseball Classic ended up having down seasons and there seemed to be more nagging injuries than normal. With a sample size of just one tournament it is impossible to say whether the WBC had caused these additional injuries or downturn in player’s statistics but at least in my mind it was a data point to consider when the tournament came around again.

Today marked the day when the national teams would announce their final rosters for the 2009 World Baseball Classic that begins play on March 5. Even before the announcement many of the game’s biggest stars had already opted out of participating. Where 2006 seemed like all the stars were involved; this year it seemed as though there were many more choosing not to be a part. Arizona Diamondbacks ace Brandon Webb had already declined an invitation as had co-ace Dan Haren. Closer Chad Qualls likewise bowed out citing the upcoming birth of his child as the reason. St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols also declined an invitation as did free agent Manny Ramirez. The number of players choosing not to play grows on a daily basis. This trend does not bode well for the long-term viability of the WBC. It does significantly help the Cactus League in Arizona and Grapefruit League in Florida. Baseball fans are more apt to attend a spring training game than a WBC contest if their favorite players are with their teams rather than playing for their countries.

When the rosters were announced today the Arizona Diamondbacks still saw several of their players chosen to be among the world’s best players. Eight Diamondbacks will be participating in the upcoming Classic representing 6 different countries. It is interesting to note that none of the six countries include the United States. All of the Diamondbacks players chosen will play for other countries. The list of Arizona players includes Tony Pena who will play for the Dominican Republic, Travis Blackley and Trent Oeltjen who will both play for Australia, Luke Carlin playing for Canada, Augie Ojeda and Agustin Murillo playing for Mexico, Felipe Lopez who will play for Puerto Rico, and Gerardo Parra playing for his native Venezuela.

Each of these players enthusiastically accepted the challenge and will be leaving the Diamondbacks Spring Training facility next week to begin their quest to become the world champion of baseball. The remaining Diamondbacks will continue working out in Tucson and the Valley of the Sun preparing for the season opener on April 6 against the Colorado Rockies. We wish the WBC Diamondbacks players the best of luck and hope that this year will not see any adverse effects from these additional games.