The baseball season is officially underway, however, it is still spring training.
What?
Apparently, Major League Baseball decided to have an opening series. In Japan. It features the Seattle Mariners and the Oakland A's, two West Coast teams with small markets that virtually no one outside of those cities cares about. But they both have large Asian followings thanks to Ichiro and Kurt Suzuki, so I understand why those clubs were chosen to participate in this event.
The problem for me is that there are still Spring Training games going on. Granted, there are only one or two days left in the preseason and the regular season starts next week, but this still seems off to me. I would think that every team would start at the same time. The Mariners and A's are going to have more off days in the season, which is a big deal as the games pile up and players get worn out or hurt, and that gives them a slight competitive advantage, no? Of course, being small market teams, they have to fight with the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, and other teams who spend money like an insane monarch would.
Eventually these teams will fade away and, again, no one outside of Seattle and Oakland will care about either of them. This goes double here, where for the next 6 months the universe will revolve around New York and Boston and fans will lament not being able to stay up stupid late to watch their team play on the West Coast.
I'm happy that baseball is back. The dark ages between the Super Bowl and Opening Day is coming to its anticlimactic end. Soon the cathedrals of American sport will fill up with hopeful spectators who are convinced that this is the year their team wins it all. They will live and die with each pitch, and yell at the top of their lungs like 40,000 carny barkers at an unaffected umpire who has heard it all before. As fans, we don't care. We yell at everything. Our televisions, the players at the stadium, other fans in bars and in the streets. Blood boils for 6 months until one team finishes better than all the rest.
Until the end of the season, Yankees fans will have to bear Red Sox fans whining about the incongruity between the two teams, when, in fact, they are essentially the same. Generations of bitterness and envy have created raw emotional venom that Yankees fans have endured with class and dignity. Never have I seen so much rancor towards one team, especially when that team is playing 1000 miles away. One summer weekend, I was in Boston, and the Sox were at home playing a series against some random team. At the same time the Yankees were in Texas playing against the Rangers. On the streets surrounding Fenway, vendors were peddling t-shirts and other items attacking Yankees players. Why? Why not aim that fury at the team that is actually playing your beloved Sox?
Baseball lives on a different plane. It penetrates the soul of die hard fans and constricts their attention spans to one thing. Box scores in newspapers are read before headlines, and debates over the merits of random players fill the void of silence across the nation. There are baseball fans everywhere, and during the season, a great pride is taken by each one in their ability to talk to other fans unknown to them before sitting down next to each other and watching a game. Friendships are forged over pints and pitchers, and debates rage for weeks without an answer.
Baseball season has started, and this is our year.
SD
No comments:
Post a Comment