Baseball: Not My Pastime

I once turned an unassisted triple play(first grade tee ball...actually the Dad's tossed underhand) and I played baseball straight through high school. I appreciate the great Ernie Banks quote, "Let's play two;" but, when I'm listening to Mike Francesa on WFAN, or Michael Kay on ESPN radio, I find myself wondering, what exactly is so great about baseball? I will not watch or attend a game, unless specifically invited(like I have been to the Mets vs Sox exhibition at CitiField), until at least July 1. (This could change this year, however, as I am excited by each of the new stadiums in New York). I can't get excited for Opening Day. I'm too pumped about March Madness and The Masters and my own golf game to worry about the Mets and Yankees in the first month of the season. I can't stand the constant talk about "Jetah," "Jaba," "Georgie," "Robbie," "Melky," and I wonder if the rest of you baseball nuts have a life?

Come July 1, I become intrigued by the daily box scores and the general flow to the baseball season. I enjoy watching the starting pitching rotation cycle through in five game increments and I will occasionally watch the Sunday Night Game on ESPN. I can't truly enjoy baseball until every pitch matters. Did you see the slow-motion shot of BJ Upton digging-in his spikes preparing to steal second base in the rainy, soon-to-be-postponed World Series Game 4? And then his slide into second? What about his dropping from 5th to 4th gear rounding third base so as not to slip and fall and then scoring the game-tying run? That is baseball. Nothing in April compares to that.

After the Final Four comes The Masters (and I'll watch the coverage all week on the Golf Channel). While the rest of you morph into baseball/couch potato mode, I will gladly head to the gym in the evenings and stop at the course on the way home for some chipping and putting. I will then watch TNT's playoff basketball 40 games in 40 nights or whatever it is and I'm even planning to recommit myself to watching the hockey playoffs (MSG's HD has me enjoying the Rangers). Through April and May, as June's US Open at Bethpage Black approaches, I will be trying, desperately, to get out on that course once or twice . As the NBA Finals come to a close, I'll be preparing for summer which to me is defined by the beach, not by baseball.

Lastly, has anyone told you that baseball is ruined? That for 15 years it's been one big joke? I'm thirty years old and my best baseball memories officially end somewhere around Kirby Puckett, Kirk Gibson, Joe Carter, Ryne Sandburg, and replays of Carleton Fisk jumping up and down the first base line. Steroids, Bud Selig, and Donald Fey have ruined the game for me. I am an advocate of the asterisk. 1993-2008. If the game is so great, then it can withstand fifteen years of hypocrisy. A-Rod's steroid use, the latest dagger, only underscores the gross pathetic out-of-control nature of the mismanaged and poorly governed "state-of-the-game." I simply cannot watch the game and care about the statistics like I once did. As a boy, like so many of you, I had all of the lifetime numbers memorized. Today, I cannot tell you how many home runs Barry Bonds has hit. I do not care. Same goes for so much of the game.

Most of us do not get to play baseball past eighteen years old. There are times when I miss the metal spikes, the jockstrap, the raspberries on my left ass cheek, the pleasurable soreness of a hard screaming line-drive hitting me square in the palm of my mitt, and, of course, the line-drive up the middle and the casual rounding of first-base like you've done it one thousand times before. But golf is better. Surfing is better. And, in Colorado or Utah, skiing is better. Someone please tell me why watching 162 baseball games is pleasurable?

I will not transition this bog entry into why football has now become the National Pastime. I disagree with this notion. Alas, we've found another topic for another post...

What Game are We Playing? An Introduction

This Blog is officially underway, on its way, and under construction.

Here is where its going. Interests of mine include:

• Sports media: From ESPN's Around the Horn and PTI, to talk radio, to HBO's Real Sports what's good, what's crap, who knows there stuff, and who is full of hot air?
• Golf. The greatest of games.
• I grew up playing soccer, baseball, and basketball. I even played two of these sports in college. Today, I love to surf, ski, and play golf. I also play some squash and practice yoga and I love the outdoors. I believe that not enough people make the transition to these lifelong sports and activities.
  
• Things I read and Watch and listen to: I prefer si.com although I wish I read more of ESPN's The Sports Guy as he is certainly an inspiration, NY Times Sports Section, Espn's PTI and Around the Horn, WFAN Radio, ESPN Radio, and I've read tons of sports books like many by John Feinstein (though I don't care for them any longer), The Best American Sports Writing series, etc. I love Outside Magazine, Golf Digest, and the Cloudeveil and Patagonia catalogs.
• Travel. I won't list the places I've been...yet. But surfing and skiing and golfing are great ways to see the world.
  
• Indeed, I am a hoops junky. I would gladly watch Argentina vs Spain in a quarterfinal at the World Basketball Championships. I watch the NIT, and I am passionate about Division III basketball. The great site d3hoops.com and my frequent posts in the NESCAC room also inspired this Blog.
• A sampler of people who have inspired me are: MLK, Hemingway, Springsteen, Dean Smith, Tiger, Obama, Kelly Slater and a whole host of surfers, Dick Vitale, Hubie Brown, Frank Deford, Jim Nantz, Christopher "Mad Dog" Russo, Brandon Tierney, Steven A. Smith, Jim Rome, Don Imus (I'm a fan of his...perhaps a future post?), the whole WFAN cast, Scott Van Pelt, Herm Edwards--"You play to win the game!," and many coaches and players sure to appear in future blog entries.
  

I hope to Blog using lists like "The Top 10 people I want to write a letter to," and "My Top 10 sports tv personalities and why, etc." Alas, knowing that much of this has been done before, the mainstream sports stuff will be on a macro level (I don't care if the Giants are playing Cover-2 or if they're zone blitzing), but there will be lots of exposure to fringe stuff including Golf and the Golf Courses being played by the pros and by me and you (I love golf course design), Buddy Trips--surf, ski, golf, and much more including plenty of rants.

We'll see how this goes.

"I only know how to play two ways, and that's reckless and abandon."
-Magic Johnson