The Old Ballgame...

It’s spring and that means the start of baseball season. Sigh...

I’m sorry if I can’t get more excited about baseball season; you see for me (at least for the last 15 years) the start of baseball season means the start of a large gap between my favorite sports, basketball and football. A time where I have little to look forward to other than the NBA playoffs, NFL draft and the occasional Tiger fist-pump. It’s this way because like most of you I’m a castoff of the strike. Like a child of divorce I was caught in the middle of someone else’s quarrel. I didn’t care who won my custody, I didn’t like either of them.

For the record, prior to 1994, I was a HUGE baseball fan. The ’84 and ’87 Tigers were teams that introduced me to baseball, but my fandom truly blossomed in 1989 with the Oakland A’s. It was my first season playing Little League and I was on the A’s. We won our Little League World Series (not the Little League World Series, just our age group where I grew up.), going undefeated and the Oakland A’s won the World Series. They had the Bash Brothers, Dave Stewart, Dennis Eckersley and Ricky Henderson. Ricky Henderson. Oh did I love Ricky Henderson! Let me tell you for a small little kid, who couldn’t hit, but could run like the dickens AND had abnormally large thighs for his age, Ricky was the man. I even wanted to talk like Ricky as a Little Leaguer. The Sports Pad played well today. The Sports Pad stole a couple bases, picked some flowers in the outfield. The Sports Pad really enjoyed the pretzels and orange slices after the game.

I had hundreds and hundreds of baseball cards all organized in those cardboard sleeves with little homemade dividers so I could separate them by team. American league in one sleeve, National in the other. I even had the idea of fantasy baseball as a kid. I’d make up fake teams, to play in real cities with real stadiums (thanks to mom who bought all those sports almanacs), and I’d have a draft of my baseball cards, assigning them to their “new” teams. To say my Mom was a little concerned when I started designing each teams uniforms, is an understatement. What isn’t an understatement is how much I loved baseball. Loved.

Then 1994 came around and ruined all of my baseball goodwill. Lost were 930+ games, the 1994 postseason and for the first time since 1904 the World Series. Now I know you can say “But what about the NBA stoppage?” Well, it was four years later and I had a better understanding of how the sports world works. It also didn’t help that my hometown team, the Tigers, headed into a spiral of suckage the likes of which the franchise had never seen, a decade of sub .500 baseball. Who could rebound from that?

I mean it wasn’t all bad. The McGwire-Sosa home run race, the Red Sox remarkable comeback, Cal Ripken Jr.’s consecutive played games streak, and the World Baseball Classic. Those are the few things that I remember from my self-imposed baseball strike and I hate it.
I hate that I’ve been scorned by the 1994 strike and have missed out on tons of baseball highlights.

I hate that Major League Baseball’s front office isn’t as well run as the NFLs.

I hate that Major League Baseball has the salary cap issues that the NBA doesn’t.

I hate that in baseball the teams that generate the most revenue are always the most competitive. (Yankees, Red Sox, Mets)

I hate that Red Sox have become exactly what they always despised about the Yankees.

I hate that the “Steroids Era” has once again sullied the reputation of America’s game.

I don’t hate the players or the game for that. I hate the rules of steroids testing, that were noticeably absent during the “Steroids Era,” while all other major league organizations have more prevalent testing.

I hate that so many front office and MLB officials turned a blind-eye, while players got bigger and stronger. But hey chicks dig the long ball.

I hate that the season is so long and the salaries so high, that the competition forces athletes to do “whatever it takes”.

I hate that Bud Selig can’t come up with a better solution for an All-Star game than a tie.

I hate that I’m not surprised.

I hate that instead of fixing our nations problems, Senators condemn baseball players so they can put a feather in their cap.

I hate that Vin Scully, Ernie Harwell and Harry Caray are still the best baseball broadcasters and one is retired and another is dead.

I hate that we as fans, feel so self important that we need to, literally, brand the game and it’s history with an asterisk. (And, yes. I understand the hypocrisy of me writing this statement in my blog.)

I hate that players can hijack a team and people just chalk it up to them being themselves.

And, most of all, I hate that I’m not able to call myself a baseball fan.

Baseball fans a pure sports fans. It takes pure devotion to follow a 162 game season, minor league call-ups and all the intricate stats (which baseball does better than any other league) for seven long months. To follow baseball, it’s like a second job. It’ll be hard and it might not always be fun, but the payoff is worth it. The payoff is really worth it. The no-hitters, the grand slams, the beauty of a double play, the ice cream cone catch, a bare hand snag, a can of corn, an inside the park home run, diving into the stands for a foul ball, the suicide squeeze, and the characters.

So this is my way of announcing to baseball... I’mmm baccckkk. It’s going to take some time but I’m going to get back into it. I’m not always going to be correct in my outlooks, so I’ll need some help. But I’m ready and excited for baseball season. Finally.