The Baseball Season Begins

Sports is a dull topic for an exceptionalist.  Almost by definition, nothing important is at stake in sporting match-ups.  And the more thoughtful commentary tends to fall into two hopelessly shop-worn categories:  analysis of what somebody should have done yesterday and predictions as to what will happen in the future.  In that sense, sports analysis is a bit like the insipid political goulash served up on cable and network television each night and Sunday morning.  By now most sports fans have probably changed the channel and a few Hungarians have taken umbrage (it was all in good fun, we didn't mean it, honest) at the comparison between their national dish and the yuckety-yuck snake oil sold by the conventional wisdom politics hucksters. 

For those that have remained, on to the bread and circuses.

We confess to feeling inspired for a few moments when the baseball season begins each Spring.  It helps of course that the season coincides with nicer weather and a move from standard to daylight time.  We decided to put down a few thoughts on the state of baseball.

Steroids.  BALCO, Canseco, human growth hormone. Bleh. Baseball suffered big time (and not enough in our opinion) in the court of public opinion this off-season as the world discovered the obvious: slender young men rarely grow into muscle-bound behemoths without the aid of the juice.  There is no need to name names, but we have our suspicions as to who the likely cheaters are.  Steroids has probably done more to ruin baseball than the 1919 Chicago White Sox or Pete Rose ever did. The baseball steroid policy provides an insufficient deterrent. Under the new baseball four-strikes-you're-almost-out steroid policy, a first offense carries a 10 day suspension, a second carries a 30 day suspension or $25,000, a third carries either a 60-day suspension or $50,000 fine and a fourth carries a full year's suspension. A better policy would hand down a 30-day suspension for first offenses and the full season for recidivists, both without pay.

The Win Twins.  We miss the campy old Twins logo with two guys (Minnie and Pauly?) shaking hands across the Mississippi River.  If there is anything to the Sports Illustrated cover curse, you can expect neither the Yankees nor the Red Sox to win the American League.  This wouldn't surprise the experts at ESPN, many of whom have rallied around the Minnesota Twins as the baseball win-it-all flavor of the month.  Of course, becoming the sudden dark horse favorite on so many lists not only speaks to the herd mentality in journalism, but probably carries its own curse as well. Our dark-horse are the Chicago Cubs. Sure, the line-up is suspect, but if their pitchers are healthy (and they do not have a lefty), they have the best starting rotation in the league.

The Fuddy-Duddy Club.  If you asked us in 2000 which pitchers we expected to see filling in the top spots on the best rotations on Opening Day in 2005, we would have replied "no idea" because sports was then a game of youth, and the top pitchers generally change every few years, with a few notable exceptions.  We would not have answered Randy Johnson (41), David Wells (41), Roger Clemens (42), Curt Schilling (38), Greg Maddux (38), and John Smoltz (37).  We're probably being generous putting Wells in this group, but he's the last guy we expected to see squeezing into his uniform 5 years later.

National League East.  One of our contacts in New York, and sadly, a life-long Mets fan (how?), warns us to never bet against Atlanta unless or until they do not win the National League East.  Sports Illustrated loved the Phillies in 2002 (see curse, above) but nothing came from their blessings.  An amazing statistic to us is that the Braves have won 13 straight NL East titles.  Almost as impressive is that they have only one World Series Title to show for it.  There is some reason to think this year might be different.  The Florida Marlins, who came into existence and have won the World Series twice during the same period improved their line-up significantly by acquiring Carlos Delgado.  The Mets threw away money like a drunken sailor (or the Boston Red Sox front office) during the off-season, picking up gallons of over-priced talent, chiefly Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran.  And in theory, the Phillies have a good line-up.  Finally, baseball has "returned" to D.C., but with a line-up as anemic as the Nationals' we don't expect much this year. 

Equilibrium.  It's opening day, the only day of the baseball season which much equilibrium.  The Yankees pounded the Red Sox last night behind a big game from Hideki Matsui, the Phillies are in first-place for at least one day, and the Mariners could not, under any circumstances, be worse than they were last year.  But no predictions here.  Finally, last Friday Alan Schwarz published this amusing homage in the New York Times to a classic April Fools hoax from 20 years ago, when Sports Illustrated published an article on the mythical Sidd Finch, a gangly 6'4" Mets prospect with a 168 mile-an-hour fastball.  For a few moments, at least a few readers thought they had a scoop on an amazing prospect.  The real Sidd Finch is Joe Berton, a junior high school art teacher in Oak Park, Illinois.  The 168 mph fast ball is probably the equivalent of running a 3 minute mile, and should have been a dead giveaway, but Finch, a Harvard drop-out, had a multitude of idiosyncrasies included playing the French horn, possessing only a rug and a food bowl, pitching in one work boot, and learning to pitch (where else?) in Tibet. 

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