Rich Aurilia blew a couple of well-documented plays that we won't rehash here. Isolated lapses like we saw in the opener don't bother me so much. Ozzie Smith made errors. What worries me the most is one play -- Eckstein's base hit to open the game. He hit a pretty hard ground ball up the middle, but it took a big skip off the pitcher's mound and hung in the air for a moment before scooting just past the outstretched glove of Aurilia into center field. It seemed, in my opinion, like a play Carlos Guillen used to make all the time, the one where he reaches to his left, spins, and fires a "strike" to Olerud to get the runner by a step. If I'm right about this (time will tell), and Aurilia lets a ball go through that Carlos would have had every game or two, he REALLY, REALLY hurts the team. To make up for an extra hit every other game, he'd have to hit over .400. I hope I'm wrong about his range, or that I'm at least greatly exaggerating his shortcoming.

One other thing: within 90 seconds of being introduced at the beginning of the broadcast, Red Fairly used some variation of the phrases "no question" or "without a question" four different times. I counted and timed them. All that was sandwiched around a great anecdote about playing opening day in Montreal, where the "field was white (with snow), but we still played!" Tell us another story about the war, Grandpa!