With temperatures at single digits, it’s hard to think of baseball but college baseball is less than two weeks away. Thank goodness the Illini have found warmer places to play… places such as Clearwater, Florida where the Big East/Big Ten Challenge will take place.
The Fighting Illini website has posted its yearly Pitchers and Catchers Season Preview. For die-hard Illini fans, these previews are indispensible to get a feeling what the general strategy is for the coming baseball season. And for those who haven’t kept up since last May, 
it’s nice for simply learning who is with the team now (and who isn’t).
Pitching may be up in the air for the Illini. I don’t mean that necessarily as a bad thing. Simply put, we have a LOT of newcomers on the staff with hurlers like Chris Pack (right), Drasen Johnson, Luke Joyce… well the list goes on. If we can get another Kevin Johnson or two on our hands, well…
The preview notes that this will be the first year that we’ll have a catcher not born in Canada since 2003. Illinois native Adam Davis (left) puts a stop to that. For the record, our Canuck 
Catchers through those years were, in order, Chris Robinson, Lars Davis, and Aaron Johnson.
Interestingly, Kelly Norris-Jones who is from British Columbia, may put the Illini back on the Canadian catcher track in a year or two if he has anything to say about it. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to seeing Adam as he continues to develop.
In others news, I see on the Wisconsin Rapids Rafters news feed that they have signed Brandon Hohl and Bill Charvat for the summer.