Home sweet home?

I throw pretty much all submarine these days, they like it and it seems to be effective. (Todd Bliss photo)

We are 2 games into our home stand back here in Manchester, New Hampshire, and have split those games so far. This is not a abnormal trend for us thus far this year. We have a 17-12 record, but have done much better on the road than at home, surprisingly.

Last nights game provided viewers or listeners of the game with about the best offensive game for a single player I've ever witnessed. Our first baseman Brian Dopirak went 5 for 6 with 2 home runs, 2 doubles and a triple, and 8 RBI's. He needed a single for the cycle in the last at bat, but chose to stretch his rocket down the left field line into a double saying after "I wanted to play it right". Very commendable.

Anyways, we won 18-6, and since there I hadn't had any save chances or good opportunities to get into games over the past 4 games I got a mop up inning in the 9th. After starting the first batter off 3-0, I came back to get 2 fly outs and a ground out.

Today we didn't have quite the same offensive outburst as yesterday, and lost 4-2. My room mate Marc Rzepczynski lost his second game of the year, putting him at a highly respectable 5-2 this year, but is still leading double A in strikeouts (and walks, but we don't talk about that stat, actually yes we do, I give him crap about it regularly).

Over the next couple of of weeks we will be having several major league pitchers coming through Manchester on rehabilitation assignments. Ricky Romero, Casey Janssen and Blue Jays closer BJ Ryan will be taking some of our innings over the upcoming games, which is expected, and absolutely fine.

I was interviewed this week by the National Post, one of Canada's most widespread newspapers. Writer John Lott called me in my hotel room on our previous road trip while we were in Binghamton, he asked questions and interviewed me for about 25 minutes and ended up writing this article in today's national post.

The pictures posted on this blog have all been taken by people who have posted them on my facebook page, they are from all aspects of the game from anthems, to autographs to action...

Doing what I can to protect the bullpens from possible foul balls (on the left)...

Signing some autographs for the kids, there are a lot of autograph seekers at our games, looking for my John Hancock on anything from bats, to hats, to gloves, to paper, to arms...

One of my odd smirks, must have just seen one of the bullpen pitchers do something really dumb, or funny...

Our 'Battlestance' it's a bullpen thing. Not sure how we started it, but we do this during every anthem, we also sing our freaking hearts out.

The average bullpen scene.
Me apparently feeling quite nonshalont about doing the bullpen chart for the day...