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Open Thread: Cubs vs. Giants at Mesa, Thursday 3/1, 2:05 CT

Hooray!

It's time for baseball to begin again.

The spring training game threads will be a bit less detailed than the ones during the season; I'm not going to post pitcher stat boxes, since there really aren't any meaningful stats to give at this time.

I'll repost the starting lineup that I had up in yesterday's diary:

Soriano, CF
Murton, LF
Lee, 1B
Ramirez, 3B
Barrett, C
Jones, RF
DeRosa, 2B
Izturis, SS
Marquis, P

And, facing Jason Marquis will be new Giant Barry Zito.

The game can be heard on WGN radio and on Gameday Audio, if you have a subscription. I still think it's dumb to make people pay for spring training Gameday Audio; giving it away free would be a great sales tool. But I'm not going to pay for that to hear maybe a dozen games I wouldn't otherwise be able to see or hear. Here's mlb.com's scoreboard page for today, but don't expect a Gameday-like play-by-play.

Here's an interesting story about Matt White, a journeyman reliever trying to make the Dodgers this year:

White, who has appeared in seven big league games in nine professional seasons, paid $50,000 three years ago to buy 50 acres of land from an elderly aunt who needed the money to pay for a nursing home.

While clearing out a couple acres to build a home, he discovered stone ledges in the ground, prompting him to have the property surveyed.

A geologist estimated there were 24 million tons of the stone on his land. The stone is being sold for upward of $100 per ton, meaning there's well over $2 billion worth of material used for sidewalks, patios and the like.

Discuss amongst yourselves.