19 Days to Opening Day

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 19 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.

Today’s book is The Last Command by Timothy Zahn. This is the third in the cycle of Star Wars books by Zahn that deals with the immediate aftermath of The Return of the Jedi. The excerpt is a little Star Wars travelogue of the Old Republic.

It was called the Calius saj Leeloo, the City of Glowing Crystal of Berchest, and it had been one of the most spectacular wonders of the galaxy since the earliest days of the Old Republic. The entire city was nothing more or less than a single gigantic crystal, created over the eons by saltile spray from the dark red-orange waters of the Leefari Sea that roiled up against the low bluff upon which it rested. The original city had been painstakingly sculpted from the crystal over decades by local Berchestian artisans, whose descendants continued to guide and nuture its growth.

At the height of the Old Republic Calius had been a major tourist attraction, its populace making a comfortable living from the millions of beings who flocked to the stunning beauty of the city and its surroundings. But the chaos of the Clone Wars and the subsequent rise of the Empire had taken a severe toll on such idle amusements, and Calius had been forced to turn to other means for its support.

Fortunately, the tourist trade had left a legacy of well-established trade routes between Berchest and most of the galaxy’s major systems. The obvious solution was for the Berchestians to promote Calius as a trade center; and while the city was hardly to the level yet of Svivren or Ketaris, they had achieved a modest degree of success.

The only problem was that it was a trade center on the Imperial side of the line.

A squad of stormtroopers strode down the crowded street, their white armor taking on a colored tinge from the angular red-orange buildings around them. Taking a long step out of their way, Luke Skywalker pulled his hood a bit closer around his face. He could sense no particular alertness from the squad, but this deep into Imperial space there was no reason to take chances.

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.