It’s Daylight Savings Time for everyone else except for us here in Arizona, where the clocks never change – fitting, I think, since between the scenery, the traffic, the dust, and the illegal immigration, nothing around here changes much either. 🙂

Here in the Phoenix office of Eclipsys Corporation, the move to DST by the majority of our customers has left everyone feeling a little, well, out of sorts. When you’ve become accustomed to a 2-hour difference, the change to 3 hours makes you feel as if you’ve suddenly become stranded in some lonely wayward outpost deep in injun country, waiting for the cavalry, provisions, or both to arrive before everyone goes Boot Hill. You arrive at the office, and everyone back East is at lunch. You go to lunch, everyone back East is sstarting to drift home for the day. By 3 o’clock the office has started to get VERY quiet, and it is only by looking outside and seeing the normal mid-afternoon traffic that you are reassured everyone hasn’t left for the moon or something. Very strange indeed…

BTW, both Erick at Red State and John Miller of National Review Online are none too fond of DST. I know if I was back East, I’d feel a whole lot different.

On a more comfortable note, baseball is back, and Red at Surviving Grady couldn’t have said it better. Seems he also wants to start a Terrance Mann for MLB Commissioner movement, believing that even James Earl Jones’ character from Field of Dreams would be better than Bud Selig. I can’t say I disagree.

It’s opening day for the Red Sox, and, while I’m not as optimistic as others are regarding their chances this year, I do think it will be an interesting one since the Sox have a number of questions that still need to be answered:

1) Sure, it was only spring training, but a 9-20 record is still a 9-20 record. Is this an omen of things to come?

2) Can Keith Foulke return to anything close to his 2004 form? If not, that’s going to screw up the bullpen situation something fierce. While Mike Timlin is a warhorse, I’m not convinced that the Seanez / Tavarez / Riske trio is anything special. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see some hard-throwing youngsters like Craig Hansen and Manny Delcarmen up here REAL soon.

3) Can Trot Nixon play a whole year without being injured? If he can’t, at least the Sox have some adequate offense in Wily Mo Pena, and would likely bring up Adam Stern to cover defensively as well.

4) Will the Sox’ starting rotation break down before the Yankees? Both staffs are more than a little long in the tooth, if you know what I mean. While Beckett is young, he has had some health problems, and both Schilling and Wells (Tracey’s least favorite player) are a year older and must prove they are healthy again. Wakefield is ageless, but how long can he keep it up? Not as long, I suppose, as Matt Clement will be frustratingly inconsistent.

5) Can Jason Varitek catch the whole year without breaking down? If not, the Sox are sunk, as I highly doubt Josh Bard can be anything but a stop-gap.

The Great White Shank’s prediction? 3rd place, behind the dreaded Yanks and the re-tooled Blue Jays.

One final note on Phil Mickelson’s performance this weekend at the Bell South: when Phil gets an early lead he’s the type of player who’s not going to give it away easily. In horse racing terms, he’s a front-runner, not a mudder. If he gets off to another good start this week at the Masters, he’s playing well enough and with so much confidence that he’d be tough to beat. However, given the circumstances, it’s hard to pick anyone else but Tiger Woods, who I think wants his ailing dad to see him win at Augusta one final time. He will be some kind of motivated.