Friday's Random Notes

The Beach Bums faced Gary on Tuesday in an exhibition contest, Gary opened the Northern League season at home last night with a 3-0 defeat to the Joliet JackHammers...The Railcats managed just three hits, one of which came from former Beach Bum Mike Reese who's interview with me can be heard in an earlier post from this week...In other Northern League action former Beach Bum Lance Koenig was 0-for-4for Schaumburg with a walk and a caught stealing in the Flyers season opening loss to Fargo-Moorhead 7-4 in 12 innings...The Beach Bums, it appears, will not have the fortune of facing Scott Fogelson this season...Fogelson has struggled against Traverse City during his two seasons in the Frontier League, last year finishing 0-3 with an 8.22 ERA against the Beach Bums while with Kalamazoo, totaling just 7.2 innings in three starts...He then made two more appearances while with Florence, going 0-1...All-in-all he was 0-4 against the Beach Bums in five starts...A lefty, Fogelson was released today by River City...In another interesting move, Paul Rutgers announced his retirement from Chillicothe...Rutgers played 93 games for the Paints last season in the outfield and hit .254...While I haven't seen officially I would imagine that Washington and Chillicothe both have set their rosters...The teams open against each other on Sunday in the earliest Frontier League opener in league history (2008 marks the 16th season of FL Baseball)...Another interesting move came in Rockford where new/old manager Bob Koopmann (He managed Rockford from 2002-04 before signing on again this season, replacing J.D. Arndt, who stayed on as the defensive coordinator) opted to let go of Justus Kimbrough...Kimbrough was Rockford's best catcher a year ago but the Riverhawks have a pair of rookies on the roster for 2008...The Beach Bums also released Kenny Smith , trimming the roster to 33...Smith as you may recall my writing in the Gary blogs, suffered a significant hand injury at the end of the first exhibition game...

Exhibition Slate: Lots of games on the final weekend of spring training...Midwest gets its first exhibition action with a game against Windy City tonight in Chicago...I've heard a lot of good things about Midwest Manager Eric Coleman and am looking forward to chatting with him when the Sliders open the season at Wuerfel Park five days from tonight...Kalamazoo hosts Midwest on Saturday night...Windy City travels to Rockford for a doubleheader on Saturday...River City concludes its exhibition schedule by hosting Gateway tonight and travelling to Gateway on Saturday...The Grizzlies will then host the Military All-Stars on Sunday...Washington beat the Military All-Stars 19-2 last night...Evansville hosts Southern Illinois tonight and Florence hosts Chillicothe...