Spring Training Evidence!

Hello again everybody...Spring Training has been underway for nearly a week now. However, tucked away at Butte College south of Chico, some folks might not have believed baseball was about ready to envelope the Chico consciousness all over again. Well...here is the hard evidence.

(Here on the right is Errol Simonitsch, a big southpaw who played last year with the Reno Silver-Sox, bringing a hard heater right into your computer screen.)


Pitchers reported on Saturday morning for their first bullpen sessions. New manager Greg Cadaret wanted to see his guys throw 75 pitches, making sure everyone was sufficently stretched out.


After our Saturday afternoon Host Family and Booster Club BBQ, the whole team got together for it's first official workout on Sunday morning. From 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Cadaret put nearly 40 guys through the paces.


After a few days of drills, the players finally got going with intra-squad scrimmages on Tuesday. Exciting times for everyone. All of us in the office were competing to see who would get to take the lunch sandwiches out to Butte so we could see some innings of action. Our operations manager Stephanie Valdes drew the long-straw at the office, and she enjoyed the afternoon out there, taking all these pictures for us.

(Above, we've got two newcomers...Jason Crosland leading off first, with Ryan Brown holding him on)

With the first exhibition game being announced for Tuesday May 19th at Nettleton Stadium, the coaching staff has a lot of decisions they'll have to make. The league mandates a 22 man roster, and the exhibition coincides with the day final rosters need to be submitted to the league office. It's disappointing that so many guys will have to be released, but that is the nature of "chasing the dream". I know the ballplayers are trying to make every decision tough for the Manager.

The good news is that the team will work out for the first time at their summer stomping grounds tomorrow morning (Friday) over at the "Nett". Opening night in Tucson is fastly approaching, and the Outlaws are certainly setting lofty goals to return to prominence in the GBL.

(I'll leave you here with one final picture of the intra-squad action. Berek Fasking started 13 games for the Outlaws last season, and has returned to turn the ship around in 2009. And I believe that is fan-favorite and returning team MVP Steve Boggs patroling center-field off in the distance)