Love, Hate, Tolerate: The Lucky and the Luckless

Something which I have been meaning to do for a while, if only for the sheer hell of it. I thought I would rank each team in Major League Baseball according to my personal preferences, as if this means a flying crap. But hey, we all have our vanity, and I'm bored on Saturday night after watching a Rockies win, which equals this staggering work of heartbreaking genius. The Rockies go for the sweep over the Astros, and a 6-3 record on a 9-game, 10-day road trip (well, actually, more like a 10.5 game road trip once you add in all the extra innings vs. the Padres) with Ubaldo Jimenez matching up with old friend Shawn Chacon. And by friend, I really mean, used to kick things and yell while he was haplessly attempting to ''close" games. He went 1-9 as a closer one year, and Hurdle kept trotting him out there. Oy.

Anyway.

The Fortunate Five

1. Colorado Rockies. Anyone who reads this blog needs no explaining as to why my purple-and-black boys top this list. I love them. Too much, I think.
2. Oakland A's. Used to be really into them, am not really so much anymore, but still enjoy watching their games and have a hat autographed by quite a few members of the team (at least circa 2006).
3. St. Louis Cardinals. Was thrilled when they won the 2006 World Series, have also cooled on them a little recently, but they still have Adam Wainwright. I love Adam Wainwright.
4. Milwaukee Brewers. They merit a spot this high on the list for all their help last September, which they squelched the Padres for the last two regular-season games in order to force The Tiebreaker. Tony Gwynn Jr. mentions that the Rockies themselves have thanked him for corking that triple off Hoffman, and I dunno, I've never found anything inherently loathable about the Brew Crew. I mean, it was a total sham that Braun got the ROY, but that was the writers' fault, not his. Also, Milwaukee and Colorado seem to be on good terms, and I like that.
5. New York Mets. I know, I know. It's embarrassing to have to even admit it. I am not a Mets fan, and when going to games at Shea, frequently root for them to screw up if only because the reaction from the actual Mets fans around me is always amusing. (Booing being a recreational sport in New York). But aside from Coors, I've been to the most games at Shea, and out of the two teams in my adopted hometown, they're the one I don't hate, detest, loathe, and wish to vanish into thin air. Not that I'm talking about anyone in particular, of course. But I have a pair of good friends who are Mets fans, we go to games together, and always have a great time. It was freezing the last two times we went (earlier this week) and I steadfastly stuck it out, for a team that I can take or leave (mainly because I just love baseball). So, oddly enough, one of the East Coast darlings actually does earn a relatively high spot on this list. Whether it's for them or not, I don't know, but there you go.

The Tolerable Ten

6. Cleveland Indians. Play hard and always seem to be good, which would be annoying if I was a fan of a team in the AL Central aside from them. Also, my parents swear up and down I used to go to Indians games with my sisters and a family friend (we used to live in Ohio) but I don't remember at all. Also, I have strong feelings about The Jake having its name changed to "Progressive Field" -- what a crock. I still wish we'd played the Indians in the Series last year, mainly because we'd probably have won.
7. Seattle Mariners. Lookout Landing, a top Mariners blog, is absolutely hysterical. I'm serious, it is absolute comic genius, I read it just to laugh, and the Mariners commercials (a tradition) are always funny as well. (You can check them out online). All that adds up to a high spot for the Caffeineheads.
8. Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Even though their insistence on being called the "Rays" now is mildly nettling (I therefore always call them by their proper name, heh) they remind me somewhat of the Rockies, Evan Longoria is good friends with Tulo, and any team that has a chip on its shoulder for the Yankees (aside from the Red Sox....) is good by me.
9. Florida Marlins. Poor Marlins. You can't really hate them. A-Rod makes more than their entire team, and any time anyone good shows up, Loria hauls them off and buys more children under 21 to staff the Baby Fish. Also, I rooted for them in the 1997 Series as a spratling of nine tender years, and it was a lot of fun. (Wow, that was a long time ago).
10. Minnesota Twins. They have a god-awful stadium (although that may soon be remedied, their new park may be built without a roof.... which equals April baseball in Minneapolis outdoors, which equals oof). Still, their players are likable, Justin Morneau should be commended for nabbing the AL MVP in 2006 ahead of That Man In Pinstripes, and if they ever get Francisco Liriano healthy, they could have Santana all over again.
11. Pittsburgh Pirates. I know almost nothing about the Pirates except that Ian Snell once thought the Rockies were stealing signs and therefore threatened to start beaning them. It didn't happen, and it makes me think that it was just Snell being Snell -- i.e. totally crazy. Also, the Pirates beat the Rockies 3 of 4 in August last year. That hurt. But they are the Pirates. Success is short-lived, therefore why bother hating them?
12. Cincinnati Reds. They have the pieces in place to be very good in a few years, but then went and sent that all to pot by hiring Dusty Baker. Cueto, Votto, Bailey, Bruce, etc. should have Cincinnati fans thinking that their days of doormatting it in the Central may be coming to an end. Downside: Say goodbye to the right arms of Arroyo and Harang.
13. Toronto Blue Jays. They swept the Rockies to start that horrible roadtrip that didn't happen (you know, the 1-9 one... OOF... back to repressing). But Dustin McGowan and Shaun Marcum are a strong starter duo, and hey, I always kind of pull for anyone in the East squashed beneath the 800-lb gorillas. You know, Thing 1 and Thing 2.
14. Washington Nationals. They try so hard. And then they fail. But it's kind of cute/pathetic to watch them giving it another brave stab anyway.
15. Texas Rangers. They earn this spot mainly on the strength of C.J. Wilson, their eccentric blue-gloved lefty reliever. In case I have not told you this recently, he is amazing.

The Dubious Decade

16. Houston Astros. Seriously, who likes the Astros? They have terrible management, they had Roger Clemens a few years, they went to the Series in 2005 and then boffed it all up. Don't hate them, but seriously, the Astros? Whatever.
17. Atlanta Braves. Nobody likes Chipper Jones, including Chipper Jones, but don't tell him that. We can save his existential crisis for when it would be more useful.
18. Detroit Tigers. I have to say, watching the Tigers fall flat on their faces out of the gate, after everyone had pre-emptively anointed them the AL Champs following their acquisition of Willis and Cabrera, was pretty damn satisfying.
19. Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles are so bad. And no matter how well they've started off this year, I am sure they'll realize that and go back to their usual climes of TEH FAIL.
20. Chicago White Sox. Have THE most annoying broadcasters in all of baseball, and it was more fun when they were cursed too. Although they do suck again, so cool.
21. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Stupid name. You are not the Dodgers. And you play in Disneyland. Bugger off and get some Mickey Mouse ears.
22. Los Angeles Dodgers. I don't precisely hate them, but there are certainly no fond feelings for them either. Their fans always leave early to "beat the traffic," they spend more than everyone in the West and don't have a whole lot to show for it, and Nomar? Seriously? Whatever. The Helton homer off Saito last September 18th was a defining moment of my life. Sheerly amazing. And then we swept them in four, right in the middle of the streak. Good times.
23. Arizona Diamondbacks. Purple Row and AZ Snakepit's posters have a good relationship with each other, and enjoy bantering and discussing their teams. I am good friends with several Arizona fans from there, and the Dbacks are much like the Rockies -- a team of young, talented, genuinely nice guys. That said, they are our biggest division rival and are getting annoyingly good -- sheez, Slytherin, lose a few. Plus they have Eric Byrnes and danced on our field like it was a big deal when they won the West. We got you back in the NLCS, suckers. (Although it is true I am trying to expunge details of our early-season meetings thus far from my scarred psyche).
24. Kansas City Royals. They played us last June for one of the most aggravating series imaginable, which Rockies Nation as a whole pretends does not exist, and always seem to play like the Worldbeaters instead of the Turfeaters against us. AND we have to play them again this year. Oh brother.
25. San Francisco Giants. They only earn this spot because I couldn't decide if I hated them or the Phillies more, and decided it was the Phillies. Nonetheless, the Giants richly deserve all the fail that comes to them.

The Terrible Tier

26. Philadelphia Phillies. Overhyped, overrated, and Jimmy Rollins. Swept in the NLDS by us, after all the pundits sagely figured this team (East Coast, remember, therefore better!) would sweep US. Revenge is sweet. Go cry in your beer, you bunch of hooligans who constitute "fans" in the "City of Brotherly Love."
27. San Diego Padres. Yep, the hate is pretty epic here. You know what? It doesn't matter if Holliday touched the plate, we still beat you. And then we beat you again in 22 innings. And we went to the playoffs because you blew chunks. Take THAT.
28. New York Yankees. It's actually pretty hard to decide who goes where for the last three spots on this list, since I hate the Yankees, Red Sox, and Cubs equally -- which is to say, with the force of an exploding star? Let's just say I find nothing at all lovable, likable, tolerable, or even mildly dislikable about this band of overexposed prima-donnas. In fact, you might say I hate them. That doesn't even sound strong enough, but you know what I mean.
29. Chicago Cubs. I asked a friend if the Cubs or Red Sox should go in the last slot on this list. His response: "The Red Sox. At least the Cubs have the decency not to win the World Series." Which I think is true, and the only thing keeping the Small Bears out of the cellar (hey, they'll get there on their own, given enough time. Cubsuck is a law of the universe -- it will be a constant). I hate their fans (especially their fans) the fact they're now a big-market and still-shitty team, and the fact that it's still "trendy" to root for them when they're nothing but a bunch of giant losers. Also, their fans. Did I mention their fans? Here's to another century of Cubs futility.
30. Boston Red Sox. I have hated the Red Sox for all of my career as a baseball fan, whether for one reason or another, and it was made about a hundred times worse by last October. The Red Sox are just evil, there is no other way to put it. There is nothing redeeming about this team. They are the incarnation of the Devil. Should I tell you how I really feel? Die, Red Sox, die.

GLORY BE

Baseball baseball BASEBALL base-ball baseBALL BASEball Baseball Baseball BASEBALL BASEBALL almost almost almost smellin' springtime pitchers and catchers reporting today workouts Saturday spring is coming BASEBALL the great slump is over soon it will be better but now it's good, we're gettin' there, we will survive, almost almost almost!

Yes, that is all I have to say.

The Game Above All

(Posted this on Purple Row and Athletics Nation, two SBNation blogs that I participate in, but figured it could use its own post on my blog too. ;) Check back - and scroll down - for my start on the NL Preseason Previews, which no longer will be Preseason unless I get going).

It's 6:35 on Sunday morning and I'm sitting in the Denver airport on the heels of maybe four hours of sleep, awaiting an early-morning flight back to New York and the second half of the college semester. This isn't exactly an hour when most people are compos mentis, and I'm no exception; it's still dark outside and I'm morally objected to morning people in general. But one of the reasons that I stayed awake for so long last night was an idea that had occurred to me earlier, but only in passing. Of course, in the way that your brain does when it's 1 AM, you need to get up at 4, and you can't sleep, I thought it was great. If it's not profound, moving, or even coherent, please don't blame me. Blame the hour. However, it'll need to wait until I have an Internet connection to post, so maybe I can get it to make sense before then.

Opening Day is quickly approaching and I, for one, am thrilled. It's an occasion as American as apple pie or stars and stripes, the renewal and the clean slate, when hopes fly as high as the flag on the clean spring breeze. Everyone has an equal chance again to come out of the gate and make themselves heard, to sail or fall, and the sound of that first pitch on April 1st is beauty itself. This is something it shares with the game in general. The deep grooves of green in a newly mowed field, the smooth chocolate dirt combed and raked, the stark white of the basepaths and the bases, and the feeling of beginning again. Baseball is a precise, geometric, entirely number-oriented game. It's smart, it's sharp, it's stayed almost the same with a few rule tweaks here and there from the days when men played it in baggy wool uniforms in rickety little one-level stadiums. It's enduring. It's constant, it's dependable, and I for one believe that love for it should be a part of your soul.

You may have guessed by now that I like baseball... clearly. More than that, I'm passionate about it. It's my life, which may or may not be healthy and may require psychiatric medicine at some later point. I was introduced to the game when I was seven and I've been an addict since then. My team allegiances have shifted with age, but they're fairly set now and one thing I've never done is hate it, ignore it, or be indifferent about it. I've watched the World Series, or listened to it on the radio, or tracked it on the Internet, for every year since 1995, when I was seven and when I was attending minor-league baseball games sixteen or twenty times a year.

Baseball is simplicity in itself. There isn't a time limit and people complain that it can drag. I've never found that to be the case. I can watch Spring Training games that don't mean a thing and be happy, just because it's the game. I like to watch for a clean dive by the second baseman, a snap to the shortstop, a nifty double play, a catch at the wall, a long homer, a sizzling strikeout. Baseball does things to me in a way I can't precisely explain. I suppose that it's love in the most uncomplicated sense.

We, as fans, spend a lot of time obsessing over statistics, performance, and press, and we should - usually. When they're on that field, men become gods and remain up there for the summer (or come crashing down and turn into toads). They become almost idol-like for us, and that's not really much of a surprise. If we're watching them every day, we begin to take an obsessive interest in them. Our mood for the day can be entirely determined by whether our team wins or loses, and these men are responsible for it.

We give them so much of ourselves and we expect a lot in return for all the emotional investment, late nights, "not now, I'm watching the game"-s and money that we give them, in tickets, caps, shirts, jerseys - everything to show that yeah, we love this team, and we're proud to. But sometimes, we as baseball fans need to step back and peel back that skin of distractions and irritations, and get back to the basics.

When the pitcher toes the rubber and delivers a little white sphere sixty feet, six inches, at speeds ranging from seventy to a hundred miles an hour while another man stands waiting to whack it with a thin little stick, it sounds almost ludicrous. But it's beautiful. On a cold spring night you're at the park in your windbreaker and your scarf, shivering with your hot dog and scorecard clutched in your hand. You're cold, but you're not going anywhere. It's early-season baseball and maybe pennants aren't won in April, but it's the game again and you've missed it so very much during the offseason that you've resorted to badgering your sister to quiz you.

Spring goes onto summer and the days lengthen into long, lazy evenings that you can spend sitting at the park, watching the sun go down in a blaze of glory and enjoying the breeze cooling the hot air. When the sunset etches those tiger stripes of gold and shadow into the green-groomed field, it may be the most beautiful thing on earth. The racks of lights come on and the forty thousand faces peer down and it's become something a little more important by now. You can cheer (you always do) but you're getting more involved. You've been giving this team everything, every day, for two or three months now and you're still ready to go. You're hooked. You may disappoint your family since you just have to catch one more pitch, one more inning, on the events that you can't make it to the park and have to watch on TV.

Then comes autumn, and the chill in the air comes back, but there's more pressure than ever. Your team is in a breakneck race - may make it, may not, your social life is severely suffering, and you just have to know. A thrill and an adrenaline has hold of every pitch the deeper you move into October. You love it more than ever, but boy, are you tired. You resort to all sorts of superstitions that you honestly believe affect the outcome of the game. You need your hat, socks, beard, and you need to be sitting in the same place, at the same angle, with the same drink... but as long as it's working, you're not about to call anyone else for what they're doing.

Then it comes to a glorious, climactic finish (or terrible defeat, depending on your allegiance) and you need the winter to recover, either gloating happily or mumbling about next year. You watch your team's transactions. You write previews, projections. Your long-wearing heart has regenerated itself and it's ready to open up again.

This is baseball: playing catch so late that it's dark, making throws only with the porch light or the moon to judge, then going to the ballpark and marveling at how beautiful just pitch-and-catch can be when it's done by major leaguers. The field, the lights, the applause, the way that you can be shaking your head and cringing in despair and then jumping up and screaming in euphoria, loving the hell out of every single stranger around you despite having never talked to them in your life, exchanging fist bumps, high fives, hoarse shouts. The spring chill, the summer evenings, the autumn thrill, the winter waiting and resting. Talking about it, dissecting it, sometimes wondering how you can keep loving it when it's just killing you. Wishing you could stop caring so much - but you do, you always do, and you go back. After all, you need to see just one more pitch, honey, just one more pitch, before you come up for dinner.

Baseball gets a lot of bad press sometime. There's steroids, scandals, prima donnas, Bud Selig, teams demanding ballparks, teams demanding moves, contraction threats, expansion flops, low TV ratings, snide columnists, angry fans, jaded players, detached executives, and generally a number of other things that overshadow it. But as the great renewal draws closer, Spring Training winds to an end, and everyone gets their pen and pencils (or Internet connections) ready to watch and record and love and hope and die all over again, I thought I'd remind us of what's really important underneath all that: just the pure, simple, real, wonderful game that is baseball.

Bring on the first pitch of 2007. I'm ready.

(Well, I found an Internet connection in my dorm - back to New York safe and sound after a full day of traveling involving a car, two planes, a bus, a train, and a walk. I have to say, it's just a little bit odd how much baseball I kept hearing about today. Somebody asking another passenger when Opening Day was, a kid playing an MLB game on his PlayStation, a guy talking about which teams he liked (the White Sox, Cubs, Padres, and Indians.... and when he asked a little boy, "Do you know why I like the Indians?" the boy answered, "Grady Sizemore?" Priceless. But no, the answer was Major League. A guy reading the baseball section on the train, a mother riffling through her son's baseball cards... it's everywhere, I tell ya).

HAHAHAHA! I'm SO HAPPY!!!

Yes, yes, the Devil Rays are last on the list for the AL East previews, can you blame me if I'm not raring to write about them? I'm just so thrilled beyond belief that I can't get to them. Maybe tonight, once I get back from softball practice. In the meantime.... BASEBALL HAS STARTED.... and some enterprising fellow on Viva El Birdos discovered a link to watch spring training games on MLB.com Gameday, which is how I do the vast majority of my game-watching. So... right now... I am watching ADAM pitch against the Marlins, and can you blame me for squealing with happiness? The update time isn't the greatest... but it's ADAM... and the CARDINALS.... and BASEBALL!!!

The offseason is over! Praise jeebus!

The man is just so fricken' adorable. Look at him concentrate on that bunt like it's the most important thing in the world.

He's even cute as a bobblehead. Yes, I have been sorely tempted to buy the Adam World Series bobblehead off eBay.

No, there is no point and purpose to this post except to a) rejoice in the glory that is baseball reborn from the depths of offseason darkness, and b) Adam Wainwright is just so cute I can't stand it. Devil Rays preview later, if you must.

edit: The Cards win 6-3, with Randy Flores permitting 2 of the runs in the ninth. Adam threw 3 scoreless, hitless innings, needing only 30 pitches. The Rockies are currently whipping up on the White Sox 11-4, with big men Atkins, Holliday, and Hawpe all showing up and contributing in a big way. Baseball is back and this girl is happy.

Aliveness Is Good, No Baseball Is Not

Seeing as it has been a month since I brought my terrifying baseball-mad thoughts to the page - er, screen, I thought that now that I'm back at school and spring training starts in a month, I finally had enough material to scare you all again. What to say? Well, after my last frazzled post, the week DID end, I flew home on December 15th, survived a number of minor scares, and enjoyed a full month of time off, reading, watching Lord of the Rings for the first time in two years, and shoveling snow. Whoo BOY, did I shovel a lot of snow. Colorado kindly noticed that New York hadn't gotten any snow and proceeded to oblige me with three blizzards in three weeks, one of which included an accident in front of our driveway (fortunately not involving us) a constant parade of shoveling, and having to rescue a visiting English family who were rather unused to our wacky weather. Not to mention trucking down our steep dirt road with my sister, attempting to tie it off with a rope due to the accident halfway up, with a neon pool toy to catch attention. At dusk. In a blizzard. Yeah.

Aside from that, I thoroughly enjoyed my Christmas break, but I flew back to New York yesterday - another ordeal, starting with my fucking suitcase being eleven pounds over the weight limit and charging me $50, which, as you may imagine, is bad. I'm still stiff as hell today from wrestling my suitcases up the hill to SLC - I flew into LaGuardia, took a bus to Grand Central, and caught the train to Bronxville from there. All public transit, just like a good New Yorker, but I took a car out to the airport directly when leaving and probably will again, just so I don't have to worry about transit time when I'm trying to catch a flight. Also, my three bags combined must weigh a hundred pounds, no exaggeration, and dragging them up the hill to SLC was sort of a pain. Actually, a literal pain, but what hey.

Still, I'm happy to be back. Bronxville really feels familiar and comfortable, and the first thing I said, upon stepping off the train into a cool and misty night, was, "OH, it's so nice to be home." After a long and frustrating day of traveling - my flight was delayed because of MORE snow in Denver and sat on the runway for over an hour getting de-iced - it was marvelous to get back to a place where I'm so happy. I fell into my new/old bed just past midnight (very early for me; I was exhausted) and slept like a rock.

Today, I bought my books for spring term and ran errands in Bronxville, buying toothpaste and shampoo and boring stuff like that. On the way back to campus, slugging a Frappuccino (I have a terrible coffee habit) I realized I was incredibly, deeply happy, and this is a good thing for me. I settled back into my old haunts like I'd never been gone, and I'm ready to think and work again - I'm eagerly anticipating my classes and have already figured out my conference projects for both Philosophy and Writing. I am... a nerd. A full-fledged one.

On the subject of writing, I wrote a very weird, but passably good, short story upon reading Paul Auster's Travels in the Scriptorium. My family, who can sometimes be critics - they don't necessarily think EVERYTHING I write is genius, and are usually right - thought it was extremely good, instead of passably, and talked me into submitting it to the New Yorker. I honestly don't think anything will come of it, and I'll probably add another rejection letter to my growing catalogue, but man, it would be a real feather in the cap, wouldn't it? It would be the most painless moneymaker in my life, and to finance my amazing spring break 2009 trip in Scotland, I'm going to need as much of the green stuff as possible.

Yeah, about that... While I was home, my parents dug out their slides from their 1985 trip to Scotland, and it. Is. So. Beautiful. I'm doing my junior year abroad in Oxford (another thing for which I can't wait) and during the six-week March break in between the Hilary and Trinity terms (Hilary term?! It's a sign, I tell you, a SIGN!) I'm going to Scotland. My family is Scots/English, my great-great grandfather was the steward of Traquair House (the longest inhabited house in Scotland) and I've always loved the country. I'm going to Iona (subject of my history conference project) Mull, the Orkneys, the Hebrides, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and the Isle of Lewis. The last one is important because there's a B&B on it called Ceol-na-Mara, where my parents stayed in 1985, and they loved the proprietors. Due to the miracle of the Internet, we discovered that the place is still operating, and it would be an absolute kick to stay with the same people that the 'rents did - the owners, Les and Sally McDonald, are apparently some of the nicest people in the world. It would be sweet to show up with their old business card and a photo that my dad took of them, and go, "Remember these people? Well, I'm their kid."

But that's a little far in the future, and for the summer, I'm looking at something which will undoubtedly not surprise anyone - I want to get a job at Coors Field. I will honestly do whatever they want, whether it's mopping floors or (wo)manning booths, and that would also be a dream moneymaker. I mean, spending the entire summer at the baseball stadium, being there whenever the Rockies are, and watching games in person - and getting paid to do so, rather than paying? SWEET! The only problem I may encounter is not cheering, being professional, whatnot. Even if I don't get a job there, my sister and I are going to the 4-game Cardinals series in late May. We love the Redbirds, as you well know, and shall be there to cheer for them. In all else, we shall support the Rockies.

Also, speaking of which, when I was home, my dad dug out all the imaginary letters that my sisters and I wrote to baseball players when we were kids. He pretended to be the players that we wrote to, and answered our letters, which we always thought was cool even if we knew it was the man behind the curtain instead of the real thing. I was reading them - surprised to discover that I'd spelled everything correctly even if writing in large letters with purple marker - and just had to laugh, because if nothing else, it shows that baseball fanaticism is a long-threaded obsession in this family. I come by it honestly.

Well, nothing else to say for now. As baseball season gets nearer, naturally, the blog shall see more updating.