… I’ve already had to use my cell phone to make a last minute roster change.
… I’ve already had a baseball-related bad dream.
… I’ve already lamented (only half-jokingly) that my season is over.
… I’ve already begun to think about this year’s keepers.
… I’ve already said out loud “thank god baseball’s back.”
Good morning, everyone. You’re waking up to baseball today.
I love Opening Day more than any other day in sports for one very simple reason – ridiculous full-season projections. For me, there is no greater joy in sports fandom than extrapolating an entire season’s worth of events based only on one game. It is the height of comedy, and let no one tell you otherwise.
For instance, as of right now, the Red Sox are on pace for 162 consecutive rain-outs. Amazing, right? And Derek Lowe, after his impressive performance last night, is right on track for a stunning 33-0 season with a 0.00 ERA. Give that man an award! See how fun it is? And it’s not even noon!
I downloaded an old game for the PC last night called Escape Velocity. You play a pilot that travels the galaxy running cargo and passengers between various ports of call. You upgrade your ship from time to time, or save up and buy a new one. Mostly, the game is a long slog that consists of resource and energy management, maximizing profits on good trade routes, and enjoying the vastness of space. There are more exciting PC games out there to be sure, but for me, I love the comfort of knowing there’s a nice, comfortable game that you can casually play for a couple hours on a quiet weeknight. I feel the same way about baseball. Welcome back.
This past weekend was the 81st annual Academy Awards show (aka “The Oscars”). Also this week, baseball started having preseason games. With both of these things on my mind, my brain decided it would to combine the two. The Baseball Oscars or The Baseball Nerdcademy Awards are the result of those brain signals crossing.
Now, I could just hand these imaginary awards out based on my random whims (and I still may do that), but first I need some nominees. For that I need your help. Please send your nominees/suggestions/votes/hatemail to me via any of these multitudes of contact methods: on this post as a comment, email, twitter, or any other way you can figure to contact me. Hopefully I’ll have enough good choices to pow-wow with the other nerds (Serpico) and have the awards ready for next week.
To get everything started I will seed each category with one nomination (related to my favorite team). All the categories from the Academy were not used for 2 reasons. The first is because I don’t want to have to hire an accountant to tally anything. The second is because I probably couldn’t figure out a way to make it fit. Here are the categories and my first nominee: Read more »
Yes, This is an actual seat at Fenway. Probably cost an arm and a leg.
I’m a fan of Red Sox baseball. I travel from New York to Boston to see a few games a year. I grew up in a Red Sox Baseball household. What I’m getting at is that I love almost everything about my precious team. What I don’t love (and by don’t love, I mean HATE) is Fenway Park.
I hate having bruises on my knees from the closeness of the rows. I hate having a stiff neck because the seat is not actually pointing toward the infield. I hate getting excessive physical contact from the person next to me because we both don’t fit in to the not wide enough seats. I hate that the park is so small that even though I wake early and spend almost 8 hours online, I’m only able to get scattered single seats with obstructed views. I hate that it’s impossible to get from one side of the park to the other because the only way to do this is the third base concourse. That concourse is more crowded that Paris Hilton’s bedroom and smaller than her brain. And I hate anyone who is too in love with the park to see the benefits of a new one.
All this hate can be erased with a plan for a new park, but that’s not likely. How unlikely? A new Red Sox ballpark will probably not happen during my lifetime. This is what CEO Larry Lucchino said:
I think a result of the investment that our ownership group has made is a Fenway Park that will be stable and solid and with a normal maintenance will be around for another 50 years
Gah! Well, I guess now that I live in New York City, and the Mets have a new stadium, I should go check those guys out. I hear they have this familiar ability to do well and then fail in the end that I grew up with.
I’m going to use as few words as possible so that the ones I use will carry a bit more weight.
When it comes to baseball, assume that every record broken in the last dozen years is tainted. Assume that the greats of yesteryear are still the best and that no one born after 1970 can hold a candle. Assume that the best and purest days of baseball are behind us and will never come back.
If you want to go to the ballpark after you think through all of that, then go.
I hate the term “lovable loser.” There’s no such thing nowadays. As ticket prices go up, players garner larger salaries, and championship droughts extend even further, fans have less and less patience with basement dwelling teams.
See that guy? That’s Matt Millen, former GM of the Detroit Lions. No one loves him. Not even his family. He is the ultimate type of unloved: hated in his own city and irrelevant everywhere else. His buffoonery over the years (horrendous drafting, questionable contracts, upsetting mustache) has not caused Detroit diehards to suddenly starting hating the team, since that’s not how fandom works. But he caused them to hate him specifically. The team itself (that is, the collection of laundry that people root for), never gets the hatred. It’d be like hating a building for the people inside of it. When times get tough, fans target a single loser or a group of losers, and start hating on them in force. “Fire Such-And-Such” Websites pop up, message board posters fire off tirades about lazy players and season ticket holders show up to the stadiums with bags on their heads. And that’s what I find so interesting about fans of a consistently terrible team; they could hate every single player, coach and owner, but they’ll never hate the team.
I suppose, in that regard, the uniforms themselves are the lovable losers. The people wearing them aren’t. The owners that put them on the players aren’t. But the poor numbered shirt, forced to clothe the inept and poorly managed, are the things that fans have sympathy for. I don’t feel bad for 0-for-the-century Kosuke Fukodome, but I do take pity on his uniform. It’s so reviled it’s even a curse word in some places.
I find myself wondering what it would be like to be able to say “Aww, it’s alright. Those lovable scamps will get them next game.” That question comes from the same part of my mind that wonders what it would be like to shop at a general store or receive an ice delivery from a refridgerated truck. I kind of like being so passionate about something that I can hate someone that tries to harm it. I hate Hank Steinbrenner, for instance, and that makes me stronger. Before their Super Bowl win, I hated Eli Manning, Jeremy Shockey, the ghost of Tiki Barber and most of the offensive line, but it somehow made my love of the Giants more intense. I think the sports culture of our finest sports cities would be lessened if the tradition of the “there’s always next time” mentality came back. Hating on things is almost as fun as loving them.
Sports fandom is filled with hatred. If you love a team enough, you hate that team’s rival. Really, truly hate. Irrationally hate. Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins fans hate each other and have for a long while. Ohio State and Michigan fans hate each other because of how intertwined their storied histories are. India and Pakistan cricket fans hated each other… due mainly to decades of horrific war. Such is the way of sport, really. We give ourselves so willingly and so fully to our club that anything that attemps to defame or diminish it becomes the target of our burning rage.
I consider this a price. Fandom isn’t free. You need to invest a lot in it – money, time, love, and hate. Only when you are fully invested in this way can you truly experience the impossible highs and devastating lows that sport was created to evoke. I do my best to keep this in mind when I discuss my intense hatred of Carl Pavano.
Carl Pavano, the Yankees’ 4 year, $40 million dollar mistake, just pitched in (and won) his first Major League game in over a year. And I couldn’t be more disgusted. I hate Pavano. I hate him as much as I hate Manny Ramirez. I hate his attitude (poor), his health (awful), and what he represents (the blind spending of the early 2000s Yankees). He is a great weight hanging around the neck of the organization – a reminder to the owners and the fans that mistakes like him have given us nearly a decade without a championship. I wish I could direct some of this hatred outward, away from my Yankees, but I can’t. Everything that is wrong with how that team did business is encapsulated in one man, fairly or unfairly.
In my mind, Carl Pavano has been worse for the Yankees playoff chances than any other player on any other team. Accordingly, I have a Pavano Grudge. And I know I’m not the only one.
If there can be a lesson taken out of this, I suppose it would be that it is alright to hate something in sports. We’re all imperfect humans, and our body gives off a lot of hate. So we might as well direct it at something harmless, like a wretched, consistently injured jerk. Like Carl Pavano.
