Spring ahead

Wow, two of my favorite days in the year back to back. Sunday marks the return of evening sun with Daylight Saving Time—sorry about that for you morning risers. Clocks should be set ahead one hour, officially at 2 am. Then Monday is Opening Day of the local baseball season. Dodgers are here against the Braves for an afternoon game, the Orange County team visits Seattle. They finish up spring training this weekend with the Freeway Series starting tonight at Dodger Stadium, then Saturday and Sunday in Anaheim. The pic is from Opening Day in 1952 at Ebbets Field.

Local baseball bloggers are way ahead of the pitchers and hitters—they have been in mid-season form for weeks:

Dodger Thoughts wraps up the end-of-spring-training fate of more than two dozen ex-Dodgers, including the news that last year's Opening Day third baseman, Norihiro Nakamura, has taken his Jerry Lewis-inspired batting stance back to Japan.

6-4-2 looks at the roster and concludes this is "easily the most dispiriting team ever assembled in my history as a Dodger fan; old, fragile, yet full of stars who would superficially appeal..."

Rich at Baseball Analysts reprints some of his sportswriter-father George Lederer's real-time coverage of the Sandy Koufax-Don Drysdale joint holdout from forty years ago this spring.

Plus an untested newcomer, True Blue L.A., essential on-going blogworthiness from Bob Timmermann at The Griddle, and the Dodgers' own PR blog. Can't tell whether KPCC is going to revive its Extra Innings blog, and although both the Los Angeles Times and the Daily News are talking about launching Dodger blogs, I've seen no signs of either arriving before the opener.

Photos: Africanamericans.com (top), WalterOMalley.com