I'm On Fire

If you've had a bad day and need a little pick-me-up, may I suggest this gem (tip of the cap to Sheila for the link)?

Fool If You Think It's Over

I don't ever really need to have a new reason to hope that the Yankees have a terrible season, but if I were in the market for one, this would be a great place to start.

I'm all for optimism - cautious or otherwise - but this is nothing more than the braggadocio of a desperate fool. I sincerely hope that this comment comes back to bite him in the ass in October. Fans across the nation hold their breath...

----------------
On a related note, please tell me I'm not the only one who saw this borderline madman:

and immediately conjured up this guy:

High Hopes

Spring is a season of re-birth, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the world of Major League Baseball. Nobody knows how the upcoming season is going to turn out, but it's always good to read that Matt Clement wants to atone for a dismal second half of '05, Keith Foulke is feeling focused and Curt Schilling plans on pitching about 750 innings.

Of course, if your glass is half-full, you'll tell me that none of this is stuff we can take the bank, but it's encouraging to know that players are feeling good about the season ahead. Somebody has to take home the World Series trophy in October, so what's wrong with hoping that it can be us?

Sweet Bird Of Youth

You can almost hear the two guys on the right thinking: "Oh, yeah...".

Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick

I bet hitters all around the American League broke out in a collective grin when they saw that flame-throwing Josh Beckett is going to be using a bowling ball this season. Expect batting averages around the league to go up by about 45 points...

All silliness aside, I'm pleased to report that pitchers and catchers have reported (or 'reported', in some cases). Then again, that could in fact be the reason behind the silliness.

Virtual Insanity

Reading Jayson Stark's column on ESPN.com this week got me thinking about the ways baseball has changed since I first caught sight of it alomst twenty years ago. There are obvious changes in the structure and makeup of the game itself, but from the virtual world of The Baseball Desert it is radical changes in the delivery of the game that are the most striking and the most welcome.

When I think back to how I attempted to follow baseball in the late 80s and early 90s, it's amazing to think that actually I persevered for so long and managed to keep the flame of my blossoming love-affair burning for so long. But all that labour of love seems so distant now, thanks to the magic of the Internet. As Stark so rightly says:

There is still nothing better than a great newspaper sports page. But ... now think what you can learn anytime you want by launching yourself into cyberspace. Without ever leaving this site, you can check every box score (before the game is even over). Call up your own personal out-of-town scoreboard. Watch a game in a different time zone live. Locate a link to every baseball story in every major newspaper. Even peruse scintillating columns like this one -- and then vote on whether we're out of our minds. Sheez, is there any better innovation than the land of www?

Well, sheez, no there isn't. And for someone living so far away from baseball's heartland, the Internet is a lifeline to the game. I don't even need to go back as far as 1986 to realise how much things have changed. I can remember getting really excited about being able to listen to the 2000 World Series over my dial-up connection; now I can click on MLB.com on any evening during the season and have access to live TV coverage of something like 95% of major league games.

The content that is out there for fans - be it games, stats, analysis or blogs - is staggering, and the way in which it is delivered to my desktop is something that will possibly never cease to amaze me, but what brought home the point today about the Internet was something that the ESPN article doesn't mention, and that is the way it connects people.

For those who live in the U.S. it might be hard to imagine following baseball in isolation - you switch on the TV and there's baseball; you open the newspaper and there's baseball; you go grab a coffee at work and there could well be someone wanting to talk baseball. What I really love about the Internet is that it gives me the possibility to have those coffee-breaks in the virtual company of people living on the other side of the world. So whilst pretending to work working hard late this afternoon in my office in the suburbs of Paris, I was able to carry on simultaneous conversations with Paul (in Portland) and Beth (in Boston) on the WBC, the Mariners' chances - or lack thereof - for 2006, the enigmatic Keith Foulke and the puzzling popularity of Olympic curling.

Virtual life just doesn't get much better than that.

Rainy Days And Mondays

Although Paris was grey and wet today, and Boston was under a blanket of snow, there have still been sights to warm the hearts of baseball fans:

(photo AP)

Yup, the equipment truck is heading for Florida, which means that baseball is just around the corner, albeit only in the form of pitchers and catchers reporting. Still, after the barren months of winter, it's a wonderful sight, as uplifting as spotting the first blossom on the trees. A week from now we'll really be starting to feel the itch as we see players start their annual spring routine - long toss, fielding drills, batting practice - which will ease both them and us into the beginning of another season of baseball.

This winter has seen the Red Sox go through crisis after crisis, but right now all that seems far away - all I can think of seeing nine guys take the field in the home whites. This is a gift that baseball gives to its fans every year, this time before any pitch is thrown in earnest, when we can sit back and dream of what might be ahead of us.

It's an old cliché to say that all teams start the season with the same record, but it's true, and onto that blank 0-0 canvas each team will paint the picture of its season. Come October, the finished pictures will all be different, but if you look at them closely enough, you'll find that each of them has something to offer the discerning eye - an improved record here, a division title there, a fireballing rookie elsewhere.

Teams will be judged, as ever, on their W-L records, but if those two figures are all you take away from a season of baseball then you're missing the point. A baseball season has the feel of a Dickensian novel: there are cliffhanger endings and games when it feels like time is standing still; days when we laugh out loud and others when we feel like tearing our hair out. But above all, there is a cast of characters, some of whom we already know, others of whom will be new to us, whose interactions and exploits we will follow day in and day out over seven months until it almost feels as if baseball is providing us with the heartbeat rhythm that keeps our lives ticking over.

Power surge

It would seem that our new shortstop's bat occasionally has a bit of pop. Let's hope we see a little bit of the same during the regular season.

Unlike others, I have no particular emotional investment in the Caribbean Series, but I have to say that it is wonderful, on a bitterly cold evening in February, to be able to go to MLB.com and watch some live baseball. And although part of me recognises that these types of games will never have the same hold over me that Major League baseball does - especially with no personal national pride involved - they are still whetting my appetite for the World Baseball Classic next month.