How's the diet going, Lou?I’ve been to spring training in Florida several times over the years, but last week was the first time I’d ever made it out to Arizona form some meaningless baseball.

It’s pretty much the same, lots of guys with big numbers, fans who have no clue what is going on and every park has a woman or two whose skin is so tanned that you could cut out a hunk and make a wallet.

That’s not to say that I didn’t learn some things.

The trip included a Thursday afternoon game in Phoenix between the Cubs and A’s and a Friday game at Hohokam between the Cubs and Mariners. Saturday night my wife and I had dinner with Len Kasper. No, seriously.

Anyway, let’s start with Thursday. Jason Marquis started and threw a lot of pitches and didn’t impress anybody. Ronny Cedeno played centerfield and didn’t impress anybody. Kosuke Fukudome hit a ball out of the infield. Geovany Soto got hit in the side of the face with a throw as he just beat out an infield grounder. Two innings later he beat out another one. Something tells me Geovany’s already at his quota for infield hits.

My wife asked me “which one is ‘offense?'”

We sat in front of two A’s fans who looked at the outfield of Travis Buck, Chris Denorfia and Ryan Sweeney and said, “Wow, this might be the opening day outfield. We are gonna suck.”

Gio Gonzalez dispatched of the Cubs so easily in his three innings of work that he ended up back in the bullpen in the fourth throwing some more.

Ryan Theriot somehow managed to be a step slow on a pair of fairly routine grounders, then with runners on first and second he made a great play in the hole and started a double play. Go figure.

Fukudome got to show off his arm keeping a guy from tagging at second. He also scored from first on a double and is seriously fast.

Bob Howry and Kerry Wood pitched in the middle innings and looked pretty good. Well, Wood looked better than Howry. Theriot was busy missing grounders for Bob.

Shingo pitched, prompting the wife to ask, “Is he throwing underhanded?”

Eric Patterson executed the “Edmonds” perfectly in right field later in the game. He lost a ball in the sun, got a terrible break and then dove for it and caught it. I know, you thought the “Edmonds” included horse tranquilizer and a golden retriever.

I didn’t quite get the sunblock spread evenly on my face and forehead, giving me a “Gorbachev” like burn mark for a couple of days. Wanna see my Glasnost?

Jose Ceda looked like a guy who would fit right in in Baltimore. Lou had to take him out during his one scheduled inning of work and he took the loss.

Friday in Mesa we got there early because they have about 17 parking places for 6,000 cars. Early enough that when we walked in a guy excitedly told us that Ron LeFlore was signing autographs in a tent with Fergie Jenkins. I offered my wife $20 to ask Ron if he and his wife ever got around to hiring that babysitter?

Mmm.  Baloney. We had lunch on a picnic table under the left field stands before the game. It was nice. If it hadn’t been a Lenten Friday I’d have been all over a nice waxed paper baloney sammich.

I wore my Fukudome 1 t-shirt much to the delight of the guy sitting behind me who apparently just realized what the first four letter spell out. Big fan, that guy.

We were in left field so that the wife could get a nice look at Matt Murton. You could actually hear his albino skin sizzling under the cloudless sky.

E-ramis actually dared to play. Ted Lilly pitched and looked pretty awful in the first, then fine in the second and third. He got touched up by Yuniesky Betancourt for a two run jack in the first. It was just fair which confused the fairly hot woman sitting two people down from us. It was about to get worse.

She asked her boyfriend, “Does Lou Piniella manage the Cubs.” He told her that he did. Then she went on one of the great rants of all time.

“I hate him. Brittany’s dad got fired because Lou said that he called him a Mexican and tried to steal his wallet.”

It took me a minute to piece this all together. Apparently she’s friends with one of Steve Lyons’ daughters. Remember when Fox dumped Lyons for his lame joke during game three of the 2006 ALCS. Piniella had told some rambling story about how it’s lucky to find a wallet, and Lyons replied:

I still can’t find my wallet. I don’t understand him, and I don’t want to sit close to him now.

Fox replaced Lyons with the great Jose Mota for the fourth game of the series and hasn’t employed him since.

I just loved the woman’s account of the story. So simple. So factually inaccurate. So full of rage.

The guy who really stood out during the game was Felix Pie.  He had a nice sharp single in three at bats.  His stroke is a lot shorter and quicker this year, and he made two unbelievable plays in center.  He ran down a deep fly to center that looked ticketed for the wall when it was hit, and got there so quickly that he actually had time to slow down to catch it.  He also got to a double quickly enough that he and Mike Fontenot were able to combine on a perfect relay to get the guy at first out trying to go to third.

I pointed out to the wife how Felix likes to grab his nuts while he bats, only to be disappointed when he didn’t do it.  Now we know why.

Ronnie Woo Woo was there, of course.  Thankfully he kept his Woo Wooing to the right field corner.

On Saturday we met Len at Monti’s, a steakhouse near downtown Tempe.   It was a good time, and the highlights were my wife’s questions for Len.  They both sounded rehearsed, but weren’t.

– Do any of the Cubs not speak any English?

– Did you like Rusty?  (She apparently meant Dusty.)

For the record, only Kosuke doesn’t speak much English, but even he knows more than you’d think.  And Len said that Dusty was always very nice and accomodating to all of the announcers.

Other than that, nothing earth shattering.  It was just fun.  Sitting there, talking baseball with a guy who has access to players and managers and obviously knows a fair amount himself.

A fair amount of the night was spent with him asking me why I don’t find a job that actually pays me to write this crap.  But how could I leave you, the faithful, intrepid, unwashed masses?  (Truth is, I’d run over my own mother to get paid for it.)

Anyway, it was fun.  A few hours of good conversation, pretty good food and when we left the restaurant there wasn’t 27 inches of snow piled up around the parking lot.  I could get used to this.