Hope Springs A Turtle or Something

You smell that? It’s a combination of fresh grass, rawlings glove oil and condescension. Major League baseball spring training started yesterday in Arizona and Florida. Thirty major league teams have assembled in their respective camps. Thousands of kerchief wearing, martini drinking, sychophantic sportswriters are pumping out tomes about how great the game is and why you’re stupid for not thinking like they do. Prepare yourself for those writing snobs to brush you back with columns about how the greatest game played by tattooed, steroid enhanced, entitled jerks is underway and thus, all is well in the world.

I like baseball a lot. In fact, I’ve hit the twitter and the facebook with mini-bloggings of my own about how I miss it. I’m eager to resume my daily routine of box score review and watching ESPN Baseball Tonight. I follow my hometown Atlanta Braves. They’re expected to finish second in the National League East, which will provide me plenty of angst to draw from over the next seven months. Yet, I know baseball hasn’t been America’s pastime since football decided to run things into the 21st century.

The next six weeks of baseball will look like this.

Watching grown men run around an outfield fence and shag fly balls (that’s only a sexual euphemism in England where they hate the game) is kind of boring. What thrills some nerds, like me, is the hope that spring baseball symbolizes.

Fans of slow paced sports entertainment in cities like Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, New York York, St. Louis, Dallas, Philadelphia, Tampa and San Francisco are getting appropriately excited about their summer routines of falling asleep on the couch in the 8th inning of a ballgame then going into work the next day and bullcrapping their friends about their team’s pitching problems. But, it’s baseball. It gives off that warm, fuzzy feeling that hockey and basketball dream about. I mean Michael Jordan walked away from hoops to be terrible at baseball.

Soon, I’ll run down the drug addicts, womanizers, pompous asses and convicted felons you might cheer for this season. I think Texas, Detroit, and the New York Yankees will be good in the American League. Philadephia, St. Louis, Arizona, and San Francisco should have solid squads in the National League. My Braves will start breaking my heart sometime today when someone pulls a hamstring running an errand. If you’re a New York Mets fan, take this season off. For now, relax with pictures of dudes in coach’s shorts pulling things.

I admit that I got a little desperate in my wistfulness for baseball. A month ago I checked into VH1′s Baseball Wives. I wanted to see how the judgement of my favorite soon to be reporting pitchers and catchers translated into choosing wives, girlfriends, baby mamas, and skanks on the side. I wasn’t disappointed. Dudes are just like me. They can’t avoid trainwreck women either.

The grass is greener in Florida and Arizona this month. Curveballs are snapping. Wooden bats are cracking. I may even rub myself down with Ben Gay tonight to feel a part of it all. Baseball’s back. It means something in some of cockles of your hardball heart. You figure out if it’s hope or those two sausage biscuits you had for breakfast.

Let’s Go Braves!