There are those who hold that the two days of the first round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament are the two greatest days on the American sports calendar. It's not hard to see why: Noon to midnight wall-to-wall elimination games full of excitement. For this Thursday, which is also St. Patrick's Day, there will even be two Orioles spring training games coming along as well.
So here is where you can talk about whatever of any of it that you want, commiserate about how your brackets are already destroyed, how glorious it would be if Duke loses in the first round (they are the very first game of the day, so we'll find out soon).
If you're looking for the TV schedule for all of the March Madness on tap for today, you can find it here. It is BYOB as I cannot serve you alcohol through the Internet.
Both of the O's games will be on the non-Orioles radio broadcast, and only if you are an MLB.tv subscriber - or local to those broadcasts. The road Orioles lost to the Red Sox, with Vance Worley getting lit up for six runs in what was a 9-5 loss. Four of the runs were earned, with the two unearned runs coming as the result of a throwing error by Christian Walker. It wasn't all bad for Walker. He hit his fourth home run of the spring.
The lineup in the night game, set for 7:05 in Sarasota:
1. Manny Machado 3B
2. Adam Jones CF
3. Chris Davis 1B
4. Mark Trumbo RF
5. Pedro Alvarez DH
6. J.J. Hardy SS
7. Jonathan Schoop 2B
8. Hyun Soo Kim LF
9. Caleb Joseph C
SP - Mike Wright RHP
It is once again a very regular season-looking lineup, especially if the mystery "routine spring soreness" of Matt Wieters stretches out to where he misses Opening Day. These are the guys you'd like to see winning most of their spring games. Maybe they will.