Play ball!!

What promises to be a steroid-free 2009 baseball season opens this weekend. On the upside, it'll be the second season in a row without Barry Bonds' snarling visage. On the downside, it'll be the umpteenth season in a row that my Detroit Tigers have employed a "We don't need no stinkin' pitching" strategy.

It's funny---most of the folks I hang around with could care less about baseball. We're football folk, and fiercely proud of it. While nothing beats a rockin' Lane Stadium on a crisp autumn afternoon, my fondness for baseball comes in a close second. Oh sure, the Grand Old Game has left me hanging several times. The strikes in 1981 and 1994 made me feel like a scorned lover. But my "battered husband" syndrome sends me crawling back each time she bats her alluring eyes at me. (I'm sorry---I've got to go look at a few files in my "Asian Girls" folder).

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Now, where were we? Ah yes---baseball. Since I was too fat to play organized football as a youngster, baseball became my first love. I found that my good hand-eye coordination and quick reflexes were a good combo at the plate. My fat ass relegated me to either Catcher or First Base. My spaghetti-like arm had me stationed at first.

After hitting .737 in my last year of Little League, I considered signing a lease on an apartment in Detroit. Hey, I needed someplace to stay after the Tigers signed me, right?! It was when I tried out for the Junior High School team at Blairs that I discovered I was not going to bat cleanup in Motown. I was introduced to the curve ball---and I haven't touched one yet!

Relegated to a life-long status as an observer, I still followed baseball pretty regularly. As an adult, I've also delved headlong into the history of the game. I now count it right up there with the Civil War as my favorite historical subject. Ken Burns would be proud!

An earlier rant of mine bemoaned the decreasing popularity of baseball, but I understand fully. Baseball is not too easy to follow on television. It's like hockey, in that it's MUCH more fun to watch live than it is in front of the tube. It's no coincidence that these two sports are showing a steady decline in TV ratings, despite healthy attendance figures.

As I get older I find that baseball appeals to my intellectual side (such as it is), while football appeals to my red-blooded, reptilian-brained, cro-magnon side---a side that is still flourishing, thank you very much. Whereas baseball prompts me to nurse a couple of beers over nine innings while munching on peanuts, football compels me to consume large amounts of dead animal flesh and chips, while testing my liver's capacity with concoctions straight out of "The Twilight Zone."

That having been said, "Play Ball!" Unlike the NCAA tournament, this time-wasting activity lasts six months!