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Athens, GA (Mar 26, 2008) - Ah, spring is in the air, and the first pitch of the 2008 baseball season has been thrown. Sure, it was in Japan. Sure, people who get NESN through DirecTV could not see the game today because of "technical difficulties". But one baseball site that many fans love and adore opened for the season yesterday: Billy-Ball.

Run by Richmond Hill (Queens), New York native and Boston-area resident Bill Chuck, the site is an extension of his love of the game of baseball, and his disdain for things that distract from the purity of the game. Bill put up his first post of the season yesterday: Ten things that we don’t want to see in baseball 2008.

So here is his list of ten things, but you will have to go to Billy-Ball.com to read the explanations:

1. A Ray Oyler season
2. A repeat of the 1962 NY Mets
3. More All-Star Game dilution
4. Far East travel affecting play
5. Nee Wrigley Field
6. A Vic Willis season
7. The presence of Barry B*nds and/or Roger Cl*mens
8. A Daryl Kile moment
9. “It’s the economy, stupid”
10. Any decision by Bud Selig

Bill also has a new book coming out next month entitled “Walkoffs, Last Licks, and Final Outs – Baseball’s Grand (and not so grand) Finales". Word is that Bob Costas was "too busy" to write the foreword because of the Olympics, so the foreword has been written by Jon Miller.

So if you are a baseball fan, be sure to visit Bill's site and buy his new book. He is a great guy and loves the game, despite all of the warts. And beyond baseball, he is a communications consultant to IBM for their annual Lotusphere conference, providing public speaking coaching to new and inexperienced speakers at the conference.

Baseball Humorist Bill Chuck served as a judge for the
"Lotusphere Idol" competition held in Orlando, FL in January 2008.
Photograph Copyright 2008 by Christopher Byrne/Eye on Sports Media. All Rights Reserved.