#mark hendrickson

With Spring Training fully underway, the year of hope and dreams begins now. Dreams for fans hoping for championships, rookies to break with camp, and aging veterans looking to get one last chance. 

Over at Cut4, I took a look at five non-roster invitees that everyone should be rooting for. Seriously, if you don't want the ambidextrous Pat Venditte to make the Major League squad, I don't know who you are. 

I also started by soccer reporting career by breaking the news that Yasiel Puig is joining Real Madrid on a Fall transfer. I know, I can't believe it either. 

And if you're a fan of photography, you'll want to see the 11 "best" pictures from Photo Day. These players are extremely photogenic. 

Other stuff: 

And while I'm happy for Rakuten fans who get another year of Wily Mo Pena, I'm very sad in a selfish way that I won't get to see him launch home runs. Cherish him, NPB-ers.

And Eno Sarris' look at pitchers who have drastically changed their arsenals is incredibly interesting. This is why you can't simply look at a stats page and predict how a player will perform in the next season. These are the 'adjustments' that commenters often talk about. 

Now then, baseball is almost here. Prepare yourself mentally and physically. And finish those video games you've been meaning to, because your time is running out.

Skier: Mark Hendrickson

On the way to my grandma’s funeral I pick up cupcakes. I’m the one in charge of the cupcakes and if I don’t pick them up there will be no dessert and that won’t be enough. The cupcake store is on Alton, my grandpa’s name, and I wear a tie he gave me. I must look like I’m going to a funeral because the baker says sorry as she hands me the cupcakes. Or she might be apologizing for something wrong with the cupcakes I haven’t yet noticed, but am bound to once I set them out on the white tables in the church fellowship hall. More likely I didn’t put my arms out quite right as she handed them to me, something most people know inherently how to do, causing her to have to set the four plastic trays of cupcakes awkwardly down on my suit sleeves, where I held them out from my chest so no frosting would touch my tie. Because she is polite or because she has been trained to be, she took the fault on herself by saying sorry, though it isn’t my fault either to need so many cupcakes as to make them nearly uncarryable dressed this way. Fault is something there sometimes isn’t any of.