Baseball

Well, spring training has started and that means, very soon, we’ll be having professional baseball every day.

I’m gonna leave the serious baseball blogging to websites like Athletics Nation, or The SF Chronicle. There’s also an interesting website about the A’s new ball park, as well as other new sporting venues around the country, at newballpark.org.

I’ll be honest, I’m a little less interested this season. For one thing, I wont have as much time to go to games or watch games or otherwise get invested. For another, both of my teams seem to be in a little bit of a funk. Either you have the A’s, in their never ending rebuilding mode, or you have the Giants, who just spent gobs of money on a few players, and both teams are only going to be in it if they get lucky. But that’s what you hope for, right? Your teams getting lucky.

If the Rangers and the Angels get injured or otherwise screw up, that opens the door for the Athletics to really surprise people, ‘cuz the Mariners are shit right now. Same could be said for the Mariners, though. Maybe they have some trick up their sleeves. The Giants at least have money to spend, and they have a chance if they can stay healthy, but they just have to score more runs. The statistic for the average number of runs the Giants scored last year is pretty sad, something like less than 2 per game, right? It felt like that’s what it was, anyway.

One thing I have done the last few years is get a new cap every season. Last year I got 2. I don’t think I’m gonna get 2 this year, but I was hoping to get 1 cap that acted like 2. I mentioned this on twitter yesterday. Here’s what I came up with:

First there’s this one:

Then there’s this one:

And then there’s this abomination:

Modern A’s and Giants fans would probably look down on caps like these. They look at other teams that share markets, and they say “those guys don’t mingle” as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. “Cubs fans don’t like the White Sox” “Met’s fans don’t care for the Yankees” and in the old days “Giants fans hate the Dodgers.” Oh wait, that last one’s still true.

But anyway, that doesn’t have to be so! There was a time when people rooted for Bay Area sports more than any specific team. My cousin and I still feel this way, we’re pro-Bay Area. We’re boosters.

I have always wanted one of these caps:

To me that’s a sign of good sportsmanship, of friendliness. Just what the world needs more of. And besides, we can’t all be New Yorkers with their excellent insult vocabulary. We’re out here in the best place for everything, and they’re all just jealous.