Baseball

Sporadic snow on the ground with some grass peaking through. The temp is hovering in the 20-30 degree range most of the time which is, sadly, not even that cold if you're a Minnesota boy. Sunny today but that's a rarity. We get lots of clouds and many, many, many shades of grey with those clouds this time of year. It'll be like this (snowy, cold and grey) for another 2 months or so. Then it'll be sporadically warm or I'll be shoveling out from a blizzard. No one knows. April's fun that way. Why do I bring this up? This crappy winter existence? Because I could accept all of it if I could be playing/watching/reading about baseball.

When my brain is otherwise not engaged I'm usually thinking about next year's softball team, whether or not Rondell White will be the second coming of Chili Davis (which, when you think about it, only is a good thing if you're a Twins fan - I don't think there are many people outside the fans of the '91 Twins who even know who Chili was or why a second coming of him would be a good thing) and whether I can figure out how to get some fans in the stands on my mvp baseball game on ps2. I was digging through the basement recently and came across my old nintendo (and by old I mean the original NES with duck hunt and whatnot). I also came across my old games and, after 5 fruitless minutes messing with bats on Castlevania I rolled the dice with RBI Baseball. The Twins tore the cover off the ball on that game.

So, long story short, I'm a baseball guy. I wasn't always like this. Like most beer drinking Americans I dialed into the ol' NFL on Sundays and got hooked. I got lucky as I decided to be a Packer fan roughly 6 weeks before the start of the '92 season and therefore I've not known a time where Favre wasn't winning and playing. That'll end soon, but I'm okay with it, I've moved on to greener pastures.

I even tried basketball for a few years. I decided to boycott the NBA two years ago after watching the Lakers "beat" the Wolves in the Western Finals and I've not regretted it. The sport of basketball is beautiful, it's too bad nobody knows how to play it anymore. Chuck Klosterman loves the nba because it's like real life, the rich kids get all the breaks and everyone basically accepts that the elite players and teams will get calls they don't deserve. That's an interesting comparison, but me, I'd just like to see a nice bounce pass y'know?

So, a baseball guy. And I'm stuck in mid-winter and it's still waaaaaaaaaay too long until pitchers and catchers report. I try not to think about it. I try to push the thoughts from my head. I try not to break down what our softball lineup will be next year (last year I hit 3rd) and who will be coming back. I pause to reflect that it may not have been a great idea to take two guys who are 6 foot 5 and have the same range of motion as the Tin Man in Oz and ask them to play our middle infield spots last year. I think about the pitcher who, despite this being slow pitch softball, is still trying to hit spots to attack any weaknesses he thinks are in my swing. I think about driving a pitch that's low and outside into left field (I'm a lefty) for a double. I have endured several minutes of Cheap Seats on ESPNClassic just hoping for the 1000th rerun of Morris in Game 7.

Mostly I just sit still and try to get through work. I check the local blogs/sites like www.aarongleeman.com and www.twinkietown.com (and yes I need to learn html) and I hope for something interesting. Some statistical analysis that I disagree with, just something to spur me on to do some research and try to prove that Joe Mauer is a top 3 catcher in the league RIGHT NOW. Stuff like that. And I try not to drive my car into a bridge abuttment every time one of the guys on KFAN says something stupid like Mauer's not great until he has 100 RBIs in a season. Which leads me to do more indepth statistical analysis which is not something I'm very good at it. But at least I'm interested. That's more than I can say for most folks who cover the sport around town.

I could go all "cool of the grass, smell of the leather" on you but I won't. This has been more wistful than I intended already. I guess I'll just have to hunker down and re-read Ball Four again and try to get through this damn month and the next damn month. And of course I just realized that I lent Ball Four to Mule, who, being a jackass, has lent it to his father and I'm sure a cousin or an old friend and by now my book is sitting on an end table at some person's cabin in Duluth who I have not and will not ever meet. It's enough to turn a fella into the biggest, homeliest version of a teenage girl ever. If you see a large man dressed like a pimply 9th grade girl in a prom dress bawling, that'll be me. But I figured it would probably end this way. There may not be crying in baseball but there certainly is crying in Minnesota when it's January and there isn't a hint of baseball on the horizon.

And I don't know how, but as God as my witness I will tivo every damn game by Santana this year. And I will record those games to DVDs so that this will be the last winter that I have to go without watching baseball for this long. And my wife will wonder why I'm watching a recorded game from May next November but she'll see the look in my eyes and she'll leave me be. Because if I don't record those games and watch 'em, and if she interrupts, well then the terrorists win.