The Swedish Junior league season opened at Stockholm's Skarpnäck stadium Sunday, with Stockholm taking both its games in the three way round-robin.

Stockholm dominated Alby/Sundbyberg 22-1 in the first game, which was called in the 5th inning because of the 10 run mercy rule.

Alby/Sundbyberg also lost the second game of the day, to Eskilstuna 9-2.

In the closer Stockholm beat Eskilstuna 15-2.

The other team in the Junior league, Leksand, will be taking part in the next round, in Eskilstuna, on May 31.

With today's twin victories, Stockholm is in first place, and undefeated, in both the Swedish adult Elite Division as well as the Junior league.

Leksand Saturday (Photo: Johnny Stormats) click for more photos

What a difference a week makes!

Last weekend saw perfect baseball weather in Stockholm, warm but not too hot. This weekend half of Sweden's baseball games were snowed out, and two more were called on account of rain.

And Sunday's opening junior series in Stockholm was played in the rain and temperatures of around 4 degrees Celsius.

There was snow in Dalarna Saturday, stopping Stockholm's two games in Leksand and Alby's games in Rättvik. Farther south the doubleheader between visiting Karlskoga and Gefle was rained out.

The only games played were Tranås at Sundbyberg, which the home team won 7-2 and 8-7 (10 innings). The twin victories put Sundbyberg into a tie for third place with Tranås, with 3 victories and 3 loses each.

Stockholm remains in first place with a 4-0 record, followed by Rättvik at 3-1.

Oskar Carlstedt prepares to throw the opening pitch

Stockholm holds undisputed first place in the Swedish Elite League, after Sunday's round of doubleheaders.

Stockholm defeated visiting Gefle 23-1 (called in 7 innings because of the 10 run rule) and 10-2. Oskar Carlstedt got the win in the opener, pitching the first 5 innings, with Johan Lindgren pitching the final two.

Stockholm's clean-up hitter Björn Johannessen was 4 for 5, with two doubles and a triple, and 7 RBIs. Stockholm scored 7 runs with two outs in the second inning, with 4 more runs in the fourth, two in the fifth, and ten in the sixth.

The second game was more even, but Stockholm had a 6-0 lead by the end of the second inning. Jakob Claesson pitched five shut-out innings, with seven strike-outs before he was relieved by older brother Joakim, back in Sweden after playing college baseball in the United States. Linus Hösöyen pitched the final 1 and 2/3 innings.

Stockholm is now 4-0 and alone in first place, after the second week of the new season. Tranås and Rättvik are tied for second with 3-1 records, after splitting their Sunday doubleheader 8-2 and 2-13.

Karlskoga and Leksand are tied for fourth place, with 2-2 records, after Karlskoga beat Lekand (last year's Swedish champions) twice Sunday, 11-2 and 9-2.

Alby and (last year's first place finisher) Sundbyberg share sixth place, after splitting Sunday 6-8 and 14-2.

Gefle, with an 0-4 record, is in last place.

The Swedish baseball season 2008 opened Saturday, with four doubleheaders, and with the four home teams finishing the day 2-0.

Stockholm beat visiting Karlskoga 6-5 (in 10 innings) and 15-5 (called in 7 innings because of the 10 run rule).

Leksand won over Gefle 3-0 and 13-4.

Rättvik took two from last year's first place team and Swedish Cup winner Sundbyberg 20-3 and 11-10.

Tranås defeated Alby 3-1 and 12-3.

Stockholm defeats visiting Norrköping in Sweden's first Spring Training game of 2008.

(Sorry about the poor quality, had to record with my cellphone.)

Here on the last day of Spring Training we can look back at the coverage those of us living in Europe have been able to enjoy from NASN, the North American Sports Network. It's wonderful that we can watch baseball at all, but one has to wonder why every single game this Spring has been from Florida?

What happened to the Cactus League in Arizona? Not a single game.

Possibly more upsetting, NASN didn't bother to let us watch either of the two games between the Dodgers and the Padres from Beijing. You can get a glimpse of them for free from MLB.com, a video feed from China with play-by-play from a TV studio in San Diego. It looks fascinating, and how wonderful if might have been to see those history-making games on our TV sets.

Today NASN is actually leaving Florida to show us yesterday's Civil Rights game in Memphis, but that's probably because there are no games left in Florida. It's bad enough that major sports news sites have a habit of ignoring games in the West, which tend to finish after East Coast writers want to go to bed. But what has prevented NASN from showing a little Arizona baseball?

All this will be forgotten, of course, as soon as the season starts in the US (NASN did give us the two opening of the season games in Japan). But one hopes the same error isn't made next year. Of course, then we'll have the World Baseball Classic to enjoy, and that most certainly will not be restricted to Florida!

Some ESPN announcers seem to have a very selective memory.

Last week NASN gave us three Spring Training games, but for some reason they won't be showing another baseball game until the 18th. So I've been watching once again an ESPN game between the Mets and the Indians from last Friday. The announcers keep telling me how Cleveland's Cliff Lee got knocked off the mound in the first inning. Only it really wasn't like that.

Lee got two quick outs, then gave up a double. The next batter hit a fly that the minor league center fielder chased and just missed. Not scored as an error, but a starting Major League outfielder would have caught the fly for the third out. Instead a run scored, but it wasn't the pitcher's fault.

Lee gets two strikes on the next batter, then throws a ball right down the middle (which the announcers point out) which the umpire calls a ball. The batter, who actually struck out for the fourth out of the inning, ends up with a walk...and the announcers later talk over and over again about the walk Lee gave up, which they know was actually a strike out.

The next batter hits a grounder past the minor league third baseman, which once again, a starting Major League infielder would have caught. That was the fifth out of the inning.

Apparently shaken up by this lack of support, Lee then issues a bases loaded walk (this time on a couple of very close pitches that certainly didn't mean he had lost his control) and as far as the ESPN announcers are concerned he didn't have his stuff.

Have the announcers been issued orders that the umps are always right, and never to refer afterwards to bad calls or poor plays unless the official scorer calls them errors? Fortunately for Cliff Lee his manager knows what happened, and it was only Spring Training.

The Skövde Saints won last weekend's Swedish Indoor Softball Championships. They defeated Sundsvall 4-0 in the final, held at the Enköping Sportshall.

Stockholm's Söder beat Karlslund 2-0 to take third place.

I don't intend to post blow by blow accounts of my adventures with MLB.com's Customer Service, but their latest response indicates they certainly don't actually read the complaints sent to them, at least to the end:

Response (Mary Ann Mansfield) - 03/04/2008 07:50 PM	
Dear George:

Thank you for sending your email.  We appreciate your feedback. 

Please call the toll-free customer service hotline at 1-866-800-1275 in
 order to do some troubleshooting and perhaps improve your experience.
 Thank you again for taking the time to write!

Sincerely, 



Customer Response Team
MLB.com

The fact that I have already written that I live in Europe (and not able to use the toll-free number) seems to have totally escaped them.

Besides, even if I wanted to make a trans-Atlantic call across the time zones, there's nothing they can talk me through. The fault is not in any of my computers, it is in their own system, which fails to recognize people who have actually paid for the service.

Spring Training has started, baseball is back! Unfortunately MLB.com has done nothing to repair a glaring flaw in their Gameday Audio system.

I have paid for Gameday Audio since the system started. But often last year when I clicked to listen to a game, I got an error message saying I was a returning subscriber from the previous year who had not yet paid for the current year. This was untrue, but the only work-around was to switch to a different browser. Sometimes this worked, sometimes I wasn't allowed to listen to a game for which I had paid.

I don't know how many times I complained to MLB.com about this. Usually they ignored my complaints, when they did answer they apparently never understood the problem or did anything about it.

I had great hopes, however, that with a new season the problem would be solved. The new MLB media player is even based on a new platform, Microsoft's Flash alternative Silverlight. But no, less than a week into Spring Training the problem persists, MLB.com has obviously done nothing to fix it.

They did, however actually respond to my complaint, but their response fails to inspire confidence:

Response (Venus Powell) - 03/04/2008 03:01 PM	
Dear Fan,
 
Thank you for your email. 
 
Unfortunately, you have not provided enough information to assist with
 your request.  Please provide us with the email address you have
 registered under so we can assist your further. 
 
Thank you for taking the time to write!
 


Regards,
MLB.com Support

This message saying they didn't know my e-mail address was sent to my e-mail address. They seem to have no problems collecting money from subscribers, but are clueless about fixing a basic problem in their system. (As well as apparently not knowing what e-mail addresses they are writing to.)

And they still haven't addressed other problems I have raised with them, why purchased MLB.tv games can't be burned to DVDs to watch on a TV set (who on Earth wants to watch a two and a half hour baseball game on a computer?) and why they can't make Gameday Audio available on a delayed basis in MP3 format?