Baseball Season Starts. Rain.

The Major League Baseball season begins soon. Hope springs eternal in spring they say if you are a baseball fan. My hope is that China somehow becomes a baseball loving country. Liking baseball is something that should appeal to the Chinese. Baseball is cerebral. Baseball is a game of numbers. Baseball is a respite from the maddening and competitive material pace of life. The Chinese love of NBA basketball is an unfortunate thing to me. NBA is hip-hoppy and thereby uncivilized. My other hope is that somehow the Wild Card would disappear and real, authentic pennant races would return. No change to a sport has been so unnecessary and damaging to a sport as the adoption of the Wild Card in baseball. The NHL, the league of perpetually stupid reforms, has done anything so dopey.

National Review Online is running a symposium about the new baseball season. They have asked a fan from each of MLB's thirty teams to say why they love their team. Conservatives, says the Baltimore Orioles fan, should never change their teams. I have to admit that I have over the years. I started out as an Expos fan. But, I liked to cheer on the Cincinnati Reds of the seventies. Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, and Joe Morgan were too cool not to not cheer for. However when the Expos became competitive in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I really fell in love with the game. That was the first time I really lived or died with every pitch of a game. The Blue Jays also became a favorite of mine. Their journey from expansion team to two time World Series Champions was epic. But, I remember the monumental failures more than the victories. And the strike happened and the Jays suddenly lost themselves. They had no place to go but down, and they kept changing their uniforms. And I grew to realize what a terrible place Toronto is. Moving to British Columbia, I became a Mariner's fan. I became one at the right time. I saw their legendary playoff win over the Yankees. I went to a game during their 116 win campaign when they didn't make the series. Meanwhile, my original love, the Expos, became zombie-like for their last years. Having moved to China, I fell out with Mariners and the Expos moved to Washington, a federal government town (like Ottawa) and so not worthy of my love. I suppose you could say, that as a baseball fan, I having been something of a slut - forever dumping teams, falling for the latest sensation. In my brief narrative of my baseball loves, I have forgotten to mention that I have had flings with other teams like the Twins of Kirby Puckett and the 1978 Red Sox.

Like an aging woman, who never settled down, I find myself ruing that I never stuck with one team. It might have made the Wild Card more palatable to me.


What to do with myself today? I was hoping to take a walk with my 19 month old son Tony but alas it rains.

I was playing with the TVU player today, wanting but, not being able to get the Fox News Channel. I watched a bit of a cartoon on the Cartoon Network. It was horrid full of snotty-nosed children, clueless parents, and flatulence.