Saturday, April 15, 2006

Padres' 10 game report card...

My San Diego Padres have started the season poorly - they have 3 wins and 7 losses in their first 10 games. My report card on the effort to date:

Starting Pitching: D (Peavy has had two strong efforts, Estes had one (but went on the DL) and Young one. Brazelton is hopeless. Williams and Park are wait and see).

Relief Pitching: C (Embree, Linebrink, Hoffman, and Hensley have done OK, Sweeney and Cassidy too, except for one bad outing each.)

Outfielders: C (Left field has been poor, but will improve when Cameron comes off the DL. Roberts and Giles have done well).

Infielders: C (Gonzalez at first has been great, Barfield, Greene and Castilla have been just OK).

Catchers: B (Piazza's endurance has surprised, Mirabelli shows some pop, and Bowen is a good late inning technical catcher).

Hitting: C (Roberts bunts, Sledge pops out, Giles walks, Piazza homered once, Gonzalez leads the team in hitting, Greene has pop, Castilla is OK, Barfield shows flashes).

Coaching: D (Bochy still leaves guys in one batter too long, guys aren't tagging at 2nd on a dep ball to CF or RF with one out, Piazza has been thrown out several times, why isn't Ben Johnson getting a chance?)

We have a 20 game package of season tickets in the upper deck, Section 310. No foul balls there yet. We went to opening day 4/3 (a win) and then on 4/8 (a loss), so we are 1-1.

Hope springs eternal, but a winning streak would really help right now. We need to be at 0.500 by the end of April.

Who? Me? Blog? OK...

Who's Randy Seaver, and what does he think about? I muse a lot, running things around my steel trap mind (but I never seem to be able to catch fleeting thoughts, I wonder why?). My interests at this stage of life include:

1) Genealogy - I have done a lot of ancestor collecting a a fair amount of research, and have gathered many dead relatives in my computer databases. The product of the effort to date is on my genealogy web site: http://www.genealogy.com/users/s/e/a/Randy-Seaver/

2) San Diego Sports -- Baseball Padres, Football Chargers, and Football Aztecs are my major interests, and I hope to blog a bit on each of them on a regular basis.

3) Aerospace Engineering -- I am a retired aerodynamics engineer, and worked at Rohr (which became part of Goodrich in 1999) for 35 years on commercial aircraft hardware programs (all Boeing models, all Douglas models, most Airbus models, some business jets, etc). I may blog a bit on the aircraft industry from time to time.

4) Science -- I am very interested in radio wave propagation (a former research interest before genealogy) and global warming/cooling (I still think it's mainly driven by the Sun).

5) Politics and Foreign Affairs -- broad topic...I have many thoughts, not all of them politically correct, but mine!

6) Books -- I read historical fiction (like Michener or Rutherford), political and military fiction (like Clancy or Grisham), biographies and current affairs. I may do some book reviews here.

7) Family - last on my list, but first in my heart...I am married to Linda, we have two grown daughters Lori and Tami, and three grandchildren, Lucas, Logan and Lauren. Perhaps I will put up some pictures soon.

I am a native San Diegan (5th generation resident), and we live in Chula Vista, a suburb of San Diego. We attend the local Presbyterian church (PCUSA) and eat out every so often. We love vacations and trips to see the kids and grandkids.

So - that's my so-called life in a short post - not too exciting, but full of activity.