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Geoff Baker covers the Mariners for The Seattle Times. He provides daily coverage of the team throughout spring training, and during the season.

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February 15, 2008 12:23 PM

Sights and Sounds: Day 2

Posted by Geoff Baker

Several of you wrote in to say you liked yesterday's new "Sights and Sounds" feature from down here, so we've done another. It was a relatively cool, windy and cloudy day here. Started off in sunshine, but that's quickly evaporated. I doubt it got any hotter than 60 today. Not quite Seattle weather, but hardly pool time either.

Among the clips I've assembled today, you'll see Mariners consultant Lee Elia schooling Mike Morse in the batting cage. No, Elia isn't just here to swap baseball war stories with John McLaren. You'll see Wladimir Balentien taking some batting practice in the outdoor cage. Some footage right after that of hitting coach Jeff Pentland taking a walkie-talkie call from first base coach Eddie Rodriguez, who's in charge of the day-to-day operations down here. Things have to run with pinpoint precision, or these workouts can quickly lose focus and it's Rodriguez's job to stay on top of things.

There's a shot of McLaren confabbing with ESPN columnist and TV personality Peter Gammons. Some pitchers' fielding practice as well, in which you'll see Chris Reitsma flub one of the grounders at the end. He wasn't the only one. The pitchers have to run laps after a miss. Some more tutorials for the catchers. Most of the pitchers threw yesterday, so you won't see them back in the bullpen today. Hope you enjoy.

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