March 31-April 3

It was raining on Thursday morning (it actually started late Wednesday night as we were driving back from Reading), there was a dusting of snow on the ground in Quarryville. Not much going on that day or Friday outside of lunch dates with Jenny. Major league baseball got underway on Friday, both the Phillies and the Orioles recorded opening-day wins. On Saturday morning Jenny and her mother were along for a full day in Berks County, first stop was the ballpark for the annual walk-through day. FirstEnergy Stadium underwent a ten-million dollar renovation over the winter, the work is almost done and should be complete by opening night on April 14th. Our ballpark has been around since 1951 and the renovations are certainly for the better, I doubt anyone will be disappointed. Every year we have this walk-through day where we practice the various games and contests we do in-between innings. I've been doing it for years, it's more for the benefit of our front office interns because it's all new to them but it doesn't hurt me to get back into the groove either. In the evening we were downtown as the Royals wrapped up the regular season schedule, after a Friday win in Trenton the boys lost the back end of the home-and-home as the T-Devs took it 5-2. Yannick Riendeau and Olivier Labelle scored for the Royals, Daren Machesney took the loss in net. We had a sellout crowd of better than 7100 on hand for Fan Appreciation Night, before the game the team awards were announced. Ben Gordon was team MVP while Andrew Sarauer led the club in scoring with 67 points (25 goals, 42 assists), he and Chris Blight tied for the club lead with 25 goals each. The final record was 44-23-5 (22-11-3 at home), good enough for a division title and the #2 seed in the conference playoffs. The boys will face the #7 seed Cincinnati Cyclones in the first round (it's a best three-of-five series), the first two games are at the Sovereign Center on Tuesday the 5th and Wednesday the 6th. The teams met four times during the season, the Royals won three of them but all three were in overtime or shootout. These two clubs have a playoff history, they met in '08 in a best-of-seven in which Cincinnati came back from a 3-2 deficit to win the series. In 2010 the teams met again and no Royals fan needs to be reminded of what happened in that series. What may occur this time around is anyone's guess, we'll find out starting Tuesday. Take care, thanks for reading.