Thank God baseball is back to distract us from baseball

Spring training baseball games are very boring, especially in the early going. Regulars only play about half the game, the starting pitchers only pitch a few innings. It doesn’t really resemble Major League Baseball at all.

In 2020, the first day of spring training will be even less like MLB, with three of the four games involving a college team. This is an exhibition of an exhibition, if there is such a thing. Yet despite only a vague resemblance to the baseball we know and love, the spring training games will be an absolute godsend.

We get to watch actual baseball being played again, which allows us a distraction from all the nonsense that has overwhelmed the sport.

For a brief few moments, we don’t have to think about the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, or how Major League Baseball was ill-prepared to deal with it. No more focusing on players are exchanging verbal barbs with other players, frustrated with both how Houston has shown such little remorse after getting caught and how lightly the Astros were punished.

Baseball is at a crisis point, with faith in the integrity of the sport very much in question.

But for now, we can set that aside, with actual baseball to watch. There are four games on the slate Friday, and with no blackouts during spring training — another blissful escape from the usual reality — all are available via MLB.tv (all times ET):

Free of worry, we can just enjoy these games now, with full schedules starting this weekend. That means strikeouts and wonderful defensive plays. We are still a few weeks away from implementation of baseball’s new rules, so for now we don’t have to worry about the unintended consequences of the three-batter minimum and its friends.

It would be nice these rules aren’t simply a response to covering up another stain on the game. How terrible it would be if they were created because teams were, for instance, making more mound visits in recent years to switch up their signs because of the proliferation of sign stealing, which was made easier by MLB’s replay rule and MLB then allowing video rooms closer to the dugout. That would be disheartening indeed.

For now we can just focus on the baseball.

That means we get to see more home runs, which remind us how baseball shattered its own long ball record last season, and that Major League Baseball, which partially owns Rawlings, somehow seems to have very little control over the consistency of ball construction from game to game.

Damnit, baseball. I thought we were free of this shit.

Happy spring training!