Notes From Yesterday's Game

* Got an e-mail from Brian Snell, who may have an answer to the "No Rainout Exchange" notation on some of yesterday's tickets:

I just might have an explanation for the "No Rainout Exchange" tickets. I was at the game today, with tickets provided by a beer vendor (I manage a liquor store), and everyone from our group had the same designation. Perhaps it's for group ticket purchases?

This is probably correct -- yesterday was designated as the "Old Style Opener", sponsored by the beer company, and they must have bought several thousand tickets, which, as noted, are not exchangeable, because they all wound up being given away, as was Brian Snell's, in promotions.

* This season's "rookie hazing" has apparently taken the form of making rookies wear silly kids' backpacks during batting practice. The Pirate players are lucky, though; they don't wear shirts with numbers during BP, so the two players hanging around the outfield shagging flies wearing, respectively, a Spider-Man and Tweety Bird backpack, weren't immediately identifiable.

However, checking the roster sheet, I'm pretty sure they were lefthanded pitchers John Grabow and Mike Johnston.

Frankly, this sort of thing isn't nearly as creative as the practice that seems to have been almost forgotten here in Chicago, started years ago by Mike Krukow, a former Cubs pitcher then pitching for the Giants -- painting the nether regions of the horse on the statue of Gen. Philip Sheridan at the corner of Sheridan and Belmont.

It was always fun to go by there after the Pirates were in town and find them painted bright yellow.

Ah, the good old days.