The Northwoods League begins the season tonight with 7 games including the Wisconsin Rapids Rafters beginning their first season on the road at Waterloo. The Woodchchucks play at Madison before heading home to play the Mallards Thursday night at Athletic Park. For those not familiar, the Northwoods League is a college wood-bat summer league featuring players from around the country. The baseball is good and the teams feature lots of pregame and between inning fun to keep the kids entertained as well. And it doesnt cost a fortune to bring the family to the ballpark. Plus you can sample the world's largest chili dog! And this year the Chucks games have moved to Foxsports 1390 WRIG  our sports station. you can hear the game tonight at 6:45 Adam Seidel will be the main play-by-play guy along with Casey Olbrantz and I'll be joining him for a number of games as my schedule permits. The other teams in the league include the La Crosse Loggers, Eau Claire Express, Green Bay Bullfrogs, Battle Creek Bombers, Waterloo Bucks, Alexandria Beetle, Brainard Lunkers, Duluth Huskies, Thunder Bay Border Cats, Rochester Honkers and Mankato Moon Dogs.

Lots of interesting high school baseball playoff action yesterday. I was up in Rhinelander as the Hodags beat the East Lumberjacks 6-2. I came back and was able to catch most of the Wausau Newman-Bowler game at Athletic Park. Newman gave up 4 runs in the first inning but nothing after that as they came back and won it on the last pitch of the game in the 7th. A bloop single to tie it and an errant throw allowed the winning run to score. Wausau West advanced and they play DC Everest on Friday at Everest.  Pacelli and Marathon both won setting up a good game today in Stevens Point.

Songs of The Day( From My Ipod)

Forever Autumn-Justin Hayward (1978) this tune has an interesting background. It was written by Jeff Wayne a number of years earlier and Wayne decided to include it on his musical version of 'War Of The Worlds". This was an ambitious recorded effort featuring many of the top British musicians of the day...narrated by Richard Burton! He picked Hayward to sing it because he "wanted the voice from Nights in White Satin" It's a beautiful song and an interesting LP. Check it out if for nothing else than Burton's "Voice of God" narration.

Forever Man-Eric Clapton (1985) nice uptempto rocker with some good guitar work as you might expect. This was Claptons first music video...direted by Lol Creme and Kevin Godley of 10cc fame.