2 Days to Opening Day

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 2 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 Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide. Yes, an episode guide of one of my favorite television shows. I’d like to think that this Rattler Radio is a lot like that show. Of course, I’d like think that I’m happy and successful….JOKE! It’s from the show! Geez! Here’s the youtube clip. The line is near the end (Around 4:48) but I would suggest watching the whole thing. Bonus baseball content…Crow T. Robot is wearing an Atlanta Braves cap.

Anyway, the excerpt is Jim Mallon’s remembrance of the first season at KTMA.

What I remember of the series in those early days is fuzzy and clouded, but standing out is the image of Joel, Trace, Josh, and Kevin all smashed into my eight-by-eight foot office writing the scripts to the host segments. We would gather together a half hour before production and I would type them on my Xerox 8088 5 megahertz PC, which had no hard disk but sported twin floppies. The computer had been left behind by a client from a studio shoot. It was an odd machine, as most early PCs were, but it was free and the only one we had; from early on Mystery Science Theater and personal computers were linked in a special bond.

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.