It's a start

Last year, Colin and I spent a long, muggy afternoon at the tail end of the All Star break working a team-signed ball from the Tampa Bay Rays. This season, however, the ball is going to take a little longer.

Colin scored the first four signatures of another of our Summer of Baseball projects before last Thursday's game against the Toronto Blue Jays, again weathering a fairly muggy day and a considerably bigger crowd of hounds.

Still, the four players who did stop to sign provided a decent start to the project:

Shawn Riggans, top, and Akinori Iwamura (top photo, signing for fans in the Rays' parking lot); and

Gabe Gross, top, and Carl Crawford.

The ball, as well as a few other items, were part of our so-called doubleheader day. After attending the Jays-Rays game, we traveled to Tampa to dodge some raindrops and hound the Daytona Cubs of the Florida State League. After the Cubs-Yankees game was rained out, we turned our attention to hockey, namely the Tampa Bay Lightning's Young Guns camp.