We Blog Baseball!

I have a friend (let’s call him Carl) who, after many years, just admitted to me he just doesn’t understand why people watch baseball. And, of course, he doesn’t know that I often blog about baseball and watch it all the time. There are some people you just can’t tell what you do – you know they’ll never get it.

So in a way this is for Carl. It’s hard to believe but it all begins again tomorrow, Tuesday March 25. And if you haven’t yet figured out why humans invented TIVO you have only to contemplate Opening Day 2008.

This season begins in Japan and if you want to watch Daisuke Matsuzaka of the Red Sox go up against the Oakland A’s Joe Blanton you either have to be watching TV at 6:05 EST or make sure you’ve programmed the digital video recorder.

Daisuke Matsuzaka – Photo: Toru Hanai/Reuters

Probably Carl’s Dad or Mom or older brother or sister or uncle never took him to the stadium when he was a boy. There is nothing like the electricity in a major league ballpark. The colors are alive and sparkling: there is nothing quite like the green of the field.

There is a strange multiplying factor of being amongst many many thousands of fans – energy and enthusiasm that builds and builds. Some fans insist on standing in unison in a wave – but there is always an almost invisible fan at work during an exciting baseball game.

You feel it every time there’s a great play at second base; when an outfielder magically outruns a baseball and leaps impossibly high to snag it before it cleans the fence; when a closer blows a fastball past a slugger.

Well I doubt Carl will be watching when the season begins before the dawn, but maybe you will.

Dice-K , having helped the Red Sox to the World Series, returns home to the country where he is a national icon; Joe Blanton, often overshadowed in the past by Barry Zito and Dan Haren, gets his chance to start the new season. As always in sports, there is the human story that affects the boxscore – and that is often as interesting as the number of hits, runs, errors and who wins or loses.

Joe Blanton – Junko Kimura/Getty

Dice-K will once again be pitching at Tokyo Dome, the scene of the first start of his career in Japan with the Seibu Lions. The Nippon Ham Fighters, who, drew about 15,000 for a weekday night found themselves facing Dice-K before 44,000.

And while Dice-K struggled his first year with the Red Sox, teammates like David Ortiz are looking forward to this season: “”I know — and everybody knows — that he can get it done better taking advantage of the experience he has right now and I’m pretty sure he’s going to have a great season, even better than last year, which was an outstanding season.”

A’s manager Dave Geren had this to say about Blanton: “Starting on Opening Day is an honor, and Joe deserves it. He’s been a rock in our rotation for a long time, and this is kind of a reward for that.”

Johan Santana - AP

If 6:05 AM is a stretch for you, here’s a short sample of some of the other opening day games:
In the AL, New York Yankees open Mar 31st against Toronto at 1:05 p.m. ET at the Staidum. The White Sox go against the Indians in Cleveland a little later at 3:05 p.m ET. The Angels are plaing in Minnesota, with a starting time of 7:05 p.m. ET. As for the NL, if you love the Cubbies, they host Milwaukee at 2:20 p.m. ET. The Mets are starting their newly acquired ace Johan Santana at Florida at 4:10 ET. And continuing one of the greatest rivalries in baseball, the Dodgers challenge the Giants at 4:10 p.m. ET.

Carl - you don’t know what you’re missing.

Happy rooting. Play ball.

Several commentators to our last post made the point that Duncan’s spikes-up play at 2nd base brought the Yankees together.

Well who would have suspected that just days later, the Red Sox would find a way to create unity without the possibility of a career-ending injury to Aki Iwamura.

Now anybody, everybody who breathes baseball knows of the lifelong hatred between the Pinstripers and Red Sox Nation. And without walking into a crossfire here, I do want to hand it to the Sox for their classy display of team camaraderie.

Some bloggers at espn and cbssportsline lost it for a bit there with the usual rants about overpaid players. But that completely missed the point. Because this was about overpaid players looking out for the support staff – the folks almost everybody overlooks. That’s right. It was all about the coaches and Red Sox staff who do the day-to-day baseball stuff behind the scenes.

Red Sox Bench Coach Brad Mills - Photo: AP

They don’t make the big bucks. Fact is the $40,000 they thought they were getting for the long trip to Japan - the same stipend the players were to get - is a sizeable chunk of their annual salary.

The Red Sox willingness to boycott their last exhibition game and the threat to forego the Japan trip was, in the words of ESPN “an extraordinary move.” Add to that the willingness of the Oakland A’s to do the same, and you’ve got some deep team loyalty and unity at work. The players of the two teams standing up for the folks of their team who don’t get the face-time or the press or the accolades. The folks no one asks for autographs.

Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon - Photo: J. Meric/Getty

It all came to a peaceful conclusion when Major League Baseball agreed to pay the managers, coaches and trainers on the trip $20,000 each from management’s proceeds. And The Red Sox agreed to chip in the rest and give the other team personnel the stipend to make the trip.

Here’s what some of the players and staff had to say:

“The players just stepped up and they did what I think was right,” Boston bench coach Brad Mills said.

Terry Francona declared: “We’re so united. And I don’t mean just the players. I mean the staff, the trainers and our players showed that and that’s what this was about. It wasn’t about being greedy. It was about trying to be unified.”

Oakland player rep Huston Street put it this way: “They’re just as much a part of this team as anybody. Playoff shares, coaches get an equal share. You look at previous Japan trips, coaches have gotten an equal share.”

Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell stated that giving $20,000 payments for the coaches would not have been acceptable when the players were making $40,000.
“We didn’t think that was correct,” he said. “Giving them half of that is not equal.”

How’s that for team unity!