The timing of Opening Week, as MLB calls it, and the blooming of the cherry blossoms around here couldn’t have been more perfect.  Too bad these things only last a week. Here’s to the final weekend of both. It’s meant to rain Sunday.

I’m curious what was going through Marcus Giles mind as he stopped en route to Las Vegas, turned around and drove back to LA. Whenever I read something like that I think of the time I heard JT Snow being interviewed, saying he’d go out of his way to persuade his kids not to play professional baseball.

I’d made an agreement with myself to stop writing about the Reds so much, but how can I proceed without some mention of Johnny Cueto? He was absolutely supernatural. I watched the game on replay and counted two pitches I’d say were bad. The best moment for me was two batters after the Justin Upton HR when he struck out Jeff Salazar on three straight changeups in the mid 80s. Salazar looked like he was blindfolded and swinging at a pinata.

Another great pitching performance, unfortunately overshadowed, was John Danks 2-hitting one of the best hitting teams in baseball for 6 2/3 innings.

What would Dribbler to Short be without some MLB.com bitching? Today’s edition: “Sights and Sounds,” which used to encompass the “condensed game,” and allowed you to click and watch any half-inning, in addition to several other typical play-o-the-day highlights. ”Sights and Sounds” is a mix of “Rewind Recaps,” which are two minute highlights of individual games,  fodder from MLB.com’s house TV channel, and best of all, crap from either section that’s two or three days old. The point being if you want game highlights MLB.com wants to make sure you see its MLB.com TV garbage, most of which, while we’re on the subject, looks like it was produced in the media & communications department at a local junior college.  

I watched the Reds game for a half-inning before I realized I was listening to Mark Grace, and not Jeff Brantley.

Jimmy Rollins going first to third on a sac bunt is my second favorite highlight of this young year. Talk about single-handedly winning a game. Announcers better scramble to describe him as “gritty” and “all-hustle” to maintain their own credibility. For those who like win shares, that play netted a 11.4% gain. As an interesting point of comparison, the next play, an intentional walk to Chase Utley netted a -.4%, followed by an intentional walk to Ryan Howard (.10%). The winning run, another walk, gained 16.5%.

The highlight on the KBO card tonight was the matchup between Hanwha’s Ryu Hyun-jin and Kia’s Jose Lima. It was a real pitching gem with Lima going 7 2/3 innings, giving up a run on four hits. Unfortunately the pitcher after him gave up three runs on three hits in 1/3 of an inning. Ryu looked like a stopper, going the distance, the only blemish coming on a HR by Jung Sung-ho. Hanwha wins it’s first game of the year 4-1.

Saw Lew Ford, whose name in Korean transliterates to Lewis Fordeh, hit a nice shot up the middle for an RBI single against Yomiuri. He also homered. Yomiuri has now lost six of seven, which is almost as beautiful as the cherry blossoms. Hopefully their miseries will endure, even as the blossoms become confetti on the street.

I’m looking forward to two debuts on Saturday (Friday in the west). Hiroki Kuroda, who gets a few extra feet of fence at Petco vs. the Padres, and Justin Duchscherer, a potentially great pitcher with one of the better curveballs in the game, leading the A’s against The HGH Byrd. Duchscherer is a lightweight to be certain and moving him to the rotation makes zero sense. It’s one of those things that just might be crazy enough to work.