Baseball begins

By Friday, all Major League Baseball teams will have their opening day. The Phillies played the Texas Rangers at home and won 5-3. Their goal should be to win two out of three games in every series. I think the Phillies are going to have a successful season this year, win over 90 games and win the division again, but not by the 13 games they won by last year.

I expect the race to be a lot more competitive between the New York Mets and a resurgent Atlanta Braves team. Even in the last week of spring training, I became more confident about this prediction, because they finally signed Cristopher Sanchez and Jesus Lazaro to two big contract extensions.

I think the two-time defending world champion, Los Angeles Dodgers, are going be a great team again this year. When the Phillies make the playoffs, I hope they don’t have to play the Dodgers until the National League Championship Series, a seven-game series instead of five.

The men’s March Madness tournament has been interesting so far. None of the typical small-school Cinderella teams made into the Sweet 16, but Nebraska and Iowa are as close to that as you can get. Before this year, Nebraska had never won a men’s NCAA tournament game in its long basketball history. Iowa got many of its good players from Drake University in the transfer portal when they hired a new coach who came from Drake, which is also in Iowa. Three of the four No. 1 seeded teams are still alive. Florida was the only one to lose in the second round to Iowa.

I wish some of the games weren’t on as late as they’re going to be this weekend on the East Coast, but I will catch up and watch the highlights the next morning if there are good game results.