About four years ago, as far as I was concerned, those were the four greatest words in sports. They signaled the end to a cold, baseball-less winter and the beginning of another season of the best game on earth. As a baseball fan above all else, this Rogers Hornsby quote always had special meaning to me:
“People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”So when the long winter ended and baseball season finally began, it was always a huge deal to me. But these days, I find myself critically underwhelmed; and here’s why:
Spring training sucks for the first two weeks. Until teams actually start playing games, spring training is just God-awful boring unless you are actually there. Sure, it’s nice to start hearing some news about your favorite team again, but after a few years you’ve heard the “player X lost 20 lbs and will for-sure win the MVP and hit nine billion home runs this year” story as much as you can stand.
The first week or two of games suck, too. Unless there are a few big position battles or any talented young rookies/minor leaguers that have been invited to big league camp, the first week or two of games suck pretty badly. You get to see about two or three innings of starters playing at approximately 50 percent intensity before an endless string of substitutions.
Most games aren’t broadcast anyway. This one is pretty self explanatory, but most games aren’t broadcast and there’s not much you can glean about a position battle from a box score. Sure, if player A goes 0-for-4 and player B goes 3-for-4 you can take something from that; but it’s often more informative to actually watch. Or, at minimum, listen to.
I grew up. I mean that both literally and figuratively. When I was younger I had less going on in my life, so something as simple as players reporting to camp was a much bigger deal for me. Also, I grew up emotionally; I became more level-headed about my sports addiction. That’s not to say I’ve stopped yelling at the TV, thoroughly convinced that the people on the other side can hear me. I still do that often enough.
Rather, what I mean is I’ve been able to stop getting so sucked into the every-day. I don’t predict a World Series victory with every win and I don’t want to jump off the proverbial (or literal) cliff with every loss. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown up, maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last three years in a job where I’ve had a much more intimate relationship with the game, or maybe I’m just a bad sports fan. Who knows.
All of that withstanding, though, it’s still nice to be a little bit closer to those warm summer days at the ballpark. And there’s absolutely nothing that sucks about that.
