Every year around this time, I brace myself for the onslaught of baseball highlights that begin to pollute all my favorite sports shows. I suspect I’m not alone here, but even if I am, I’m good with it. I don’t care about VORP and UZR and WAR ratings, and until October, baseball bores the crap out of me. It just does.
Do You Sort Of Hate Baseball? Then You’ll Love This Column!
But worse than baseball’s inexplicable ubiquity are the people that insist on pretending baseball is some glorious tradition, personifying the simple joys of American innocence. Or something like that. I mean, I get it. There’s nothing more American than hanging out at the ballpark with a hot dog and a beer on a summer afternoon, kicking back in the bleachers, just because you can. It’s cool. But this column pretty much sums up why I can’t stand baseball lovers:
“Pitchers and catchers report” are among the most magical words in sport. They hit everybody differently. But their impact strikes everyone harder than they expect, no matter how many times they’ve had that first-day-of-school tingle of anticipation.
Yes, it’s pure magic. A strange brew that defies our understanding--you can’t really explain it, it hits everyone differently, but that tingle... It happens for all of us. Spring training is basically like ecstasy.
It’s been less than four months since the World Series, but it’s felt like a drug withdrawal.
See? Ecstasy! And for the record, Tim Lincecum’s experience was the polar opposite.
Winter has intervened and left us battered, every sense longing for what baseball symbolizes: sun, warm breezes, green beneath our feet and clear blue above our heads.
Other things baseball symbolizes: misplaced nostalgia, steroids, terrible announcers, caste systems, things itself too seriously, George Will (who will defend Arizona’s bizarre immigration law but rhapsodize over Albert Pujols’ work ethic), and of course, grass growing, paint drying, and chewing tobacco. IT’S PURE MAGIC AND WINTER IS OVER THANK GOD BASEBALL’S FINALLY BACK.
THE GRASS IS FINALLY GREEN AGAIN IN OUR HEARTS.
With that, here’s Blake Griffin hitting his head on the backboard, just because. It’s a hell of a lot better than highlights of the Grapefruit League, isn’t it?
More links:
-- Dan Shanoff provides an awesome look at Bill SImmons’ new project with ESPN:
When word of Simmons' project first came out, my first impulse was that it was going to be almost like an "Awl for sports." The details released today -- high-quality (if lesser-known) writers, thoughtful pieces, not tethered to the news cycle -- suggest that it is what The Awl could be -- if one of the world's largest media companies opened up its resources and said "Do anything you think you should."
-- A slow-motion camera seems like a pretty awesome investment, if only to make random scenes from my daily life seem TOTALLY OUT OF THIS WORLD. Obligatory: Chappelle in Slow Motion.
-- A poem about love, from N.C. State’s C.J. Leslie.
-- The photo/title combination is good, but the caption to the Artest photo is even better.
-- This is from earlier in the week, but please, get lost in the Album Cover Game at EDSBS.
-- An outlandish trick video from the All Blacks Rugby Team at a barbecue.
And finally, before this weekend’s Dunk Contest, here’s Vince Carter’s performance in 2000. He nearly caused a riot, and God willing, Blake Griffin will do something similar this weekend:
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