Sunflower Seeds and Keystone Light

It’s officially baseball season. I saw a Dodger game for the first time since October, which is great in and of itself, I’m not really used to watching Dodger games in October, and the boys looked pretty good. Every baseball fan across America has hope, nobody’s team is out of the race, anything can happen, even with a lackluster first half there is still hope for your team to make a late trade and turn things around (please reference Dodgers 2008 acquisition of Manny Ramirez). The media analysts and newspapers are abuzz with all their stories about the mind-numbing statistics from spring training that have never and never will matter and they swamp us with Opening Day predictions for the season, which East Coast team is going to win it this year and which curse is going to be extended or broken, who will be the home run king this year, A-Roid, Tex, or Big Papi… you know this story, you’ve watched ESPN more than once.

Forget about the hours of time you could spend (or did spend) researching spring training stats, or arguing with the jackass at the bar wearing a Red Sox hat because he has always been a Sox fan…. You know, since like 2003. All the preseason predictions about how this is the year that the Steinbrenner’s have finally bought the best team in baseball (C.C. got shellacked by the way, I know small sample size, I know he is like really good, but always fun to watch the Yanks get crushed) , or how the Red Sox have the smartest management ever in baseball, feel free to plug in your over the top descriptions of one of the East Coast teams here. So since we have all looked past the pomp and circumstance that is media coverage of the MLB season before the first pitch is ever thrown and the outrageous predictions and embellishments of mostly arbitrary facts, lets settle down and get ready for a season of baseball.

From a Dodger perspective things could not have gone any better, Kuroda dealt it dirty, continuing upon his success from last season, the bullpen was solid, Matt Kemp struck out on a slider so far down and away that he reminded me of Andruw Jones, Matt Kemp came back to mash an absolute rod over the center field fence, Matt Kemp had his first web gem of the season on Baseball Tonight with a well executed diving catch in center, and to top it all off Casey Blake went 0-4 with three strikeouts. All pretty exciting, minus the pillar at third base part, but I am not going to get into that, this is supposed to be an uplifting fluff piece about the excitement at the start of a new season. All is well in Tinseltown, the offense looks great, the defense looks great, the pitching staff appears to be serviceable, with the potential to be very good, I am ecstatic.

The time off was nice, we saw a football season come and go, the NBA is on the home stretch into the playoffs and the Lakers are in the driver’s seat in the West and despite what ESPN tells me, I will take Kobe over LBJ for every game they play in the finals this year. The days are getting longer and warmer, soon enough I will be able to go play a quick nine after work and get home just in time to catch the first pitch of the Dodger night games, things could be worse. I started training a couple weeks before Opening Day, and I think I am ready for a full season of ups, downs, in betweens, crying, laughing, screaming, cursing, and all the other usual activities that come with Dodger baseball. Hopefully the rest of America is ready too, but if you’re not, never fear. Go ahead, take a couple weeks to get into the swing of things, and when you do, you can follow the trail of ranch sunflower seeds and Keystone Light cans to watch a game with me and the rest of the DBB.