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May 11th: And, here we go again. The first player standings (fifth computed stndgs, actually) have been up-loaded to the site this morning, and the leader is... Steven Richard of Long Beach, CA who currently holds a seven point lead over Ginny Whiteley also of Long Beach, CA and ten point lead over Andrew Hazlewood also of Long Beach, CA. It must help to live in Long Beach this week. We once lived there but that was a loooong time ago.

As the data was being developed and I was using late April MLB standings, Charles Kovac of Fullerton, CA was the early leader. Steven took the lead on May 8th and two days later had opened up a 13 point lead. In the five early runs we have had nine different players appear on the leader board and Steven Richard has appeared each time not a good sign for the rest of us.

Early keys to the game would include Cleveland last in the AL Central (10 players), Oakland last in the AL West (21) and San Francisco 2nd (w/LAD) in the NL West (16). The Keys page will be added to the site at the All-Star Break.

This year, with yet another new ISP, I have had to create three e-mail distribution lists totaling 185 e-mail addresses (and one snail-mail). I will be sending out a brief e-mail message every Monday morning (PDT) for the rest of the season, unless you hear otherwise. If you would rather not be bothered with this weekly message please let me know and I will edit my lists.

May 18th: Not much apparent change among the leaders as the same Long Beach Trio continue to hold the top three spots. Steven Richard now holds a three point lead over Andrew Hazlewood and a seven point lead over Ginny Whiteley. There were, however a couple of lead changes during the week as Jim Wood of Holly Springs, NC grabbed the lead briefly last Friday. Steven has yet to be removed from the leader board and has now made seven straight appearances.

Each of the leaders has at least one division correct and Andrew has both the AL West and the NL East right. His NL East picks (NY,Phil,Atl,FL,Wash) represent the consensus picks and 70 players have it right. A couple of new keys are staring to take shape as Toronto (2 players) now leads the RedSox by 3 games in the AL East and Texas (9) swept the Angels over the weekend and has opened up a 4 1/2 game lead in the AL West.

May 25th: Another week, another lead change as Charles Kovac of Lower Fullerton, CA has moved back in front and currently holds a two point lead over Andrew Hazlewood of Long Beach, CA and a six point lead over Easy Freeman of Niceville, FL. Easy, a veteran player since our first days at Vandenberg AFB on the Central Coast in 1981, is to the best of my knowledge is one of just three players that do not have access to the internet but he will get a copy of this weeks player standings as it is scheduled to be distributed via USPS (if I can remember) and Easy is the only player on distribution.

This week we not only entered the first of the phase of inter-league play but we also breezed past the one-quarter mark of the season and it is time to take our first look at the big picture. Thus far we have focused on the keys that just a small number of players have made, like Cleveland, Oakland and Texas but there are a few bigger keys beginning to take shape that may have some long term effect on the shaping of the field. The first two to surface are Washington last in the NL East by six games and Los Angeles first in the NL West by seven and one-half games (and have led by as many as nine games). Most player have these teams listed correctly but not all so here we focus on those that have missed them. Thirty players did not pick Nats last while sixty-one did not pick the Dodgers first and ten players have missed on both teams. All but two of this last group of players can be found on page five. Gonna be a long season.

Please note that there is currently a five way tie for 49th place so there are really fifty-three players on the first page rather than the fifty players that are listed.

June 1st: No lead changes this week as Charles Kovac of Lower Fullerton, CA now enjoys a seven point lead over Jerry Slagle of Fallbrook, CA, Ginny Whiteley of Long Beach, CA and first time player, Liam Hall of Endicott City, MD. There have been some changes on the leader board though as three new names now appear there. For Jerry Slagle, the youngest of the Slagle clan, he is right where he finished last season. Jerry has also finished third twice (see Prior Winners). Note that all three leaders have Detroit (last in 2008) in first place this time. That must be important. Thirteen players have the Tigers 1st while over 160 players have the Tigers 4th or 5th.

June 8th: No lead changes this week as Charles Kovac of Lower Fullerton, CA now enjoys an eight point lead over Jerry Slagle of Fallbrook, CA and a nine point lead on James Rover of San Francisco who has made his first appearence on the leader board this year. Will have to cut this short this week as I have some other pressing needs. Maybe I just need more rest after sweating out an overtime in Game 2. I promise too do better next week.

June 15th: Another lead change this week as Steven Richard of Long Beach, CA re-passed Charles Kovac of Lower Fullerton, CA on Sunday and now leads Charles by seven points and Ginny Whiteley of Long Beach, CA and James Rover of San Francisco by eight points. This is the first lead change in nearly a month as Charles had held the lead since May 22nd. It is our fifth lead change over all.

There are two keys that have gotten very little ink to date but both appear to be very important to our contest. They are Boston/New York in the AL East and Philadelphia/New York in the NL East. While it won't appear anywhere else in the game, there was a lot of day-to-day movement when these four teams hooked up in inter-league play over the weekend. As an example: I had dropped to 132nd place at mid-week before inter-league play resumed. By Friday I was up to 86th place and on Sunday morning stood just one point and two positions behind a couple of players that I regularly compete with. With Santana going for the Mets I felt pretty good about moving up again this morning. Not to be! Santana got bombed, I lost both games and dropped all the way to 115th. It's still too early.

June 22nd: No lead changes this week but it's gettin' close as Steven Richard of Long Beach, CA now holds a Tie Breaker lead over Pat Morris of Irvine, CA and a ten point lead over Ginny Whiteley of Long Beach, CA.

This was moving week for a lot of players and some players made some major moves, so this seemed like a good time to get out last year's Player Moves file and here is what I found. Led by Bruce Brown of Columbia, MD and Blake Vasquez of New York City, who each moved up 74 places, a total of ten players improved by fifty places or more and another twelve players moved up at least forty spots. Those now in full reverse were paced by Scott Hurst of Princeton, IN, who dropped 96 places, eleven players fell fifty or more spots and another six players dropped forty or more spots.

June 29th: A couple of more lead changes last week. Last Tuesday, despite only four games played the day before, Pat Morris of Irvine, CA took the lead. Pat's lead didn't hold though as Steven Richard of Long Beach, CA now holds an eight point lead over Pat and a 23 point lead over Ginny Whiteley of Long Beach, CA.

New Player Standings page status: Well I guess that all of the votes are in, 16 of them at least. Here are the returns from last week:

Clearly the majority of those that have an opinion like the single page format and most of those felt strongly about the new format. Of the three people that like the old multi-page format only one was strongly in favor of the old format. Those that showed no preference left it up to me so it will be up to me to convince the lone dissenter that the new format is best and move on. For those that thought they were doing me a favor by sticking to the multi-page format, well, the single page does take more time to prepare but it takes a lot less time than four or five smaller pages.

So here is what we'll do: I will maintain both the single page and multi-page formats for one more week simply to give viewers a chance to transition to the new single page format but I will not maintain both formats past that time. After that and by the All-Star Break (July 14th) we will move to one page. I hope that this meets with the approval of the majority of players.

I am left with just one question. What took so long? I've been doing this (on-line) for nearly nine years and until two weeks ago no one had ever suggested going to a single page. Had I not been forced to move cable last Spring I would never have given it a thought, but who knew.