I might pay more attention to baseball this year.
Last year I paid no attention at all. We had bigger fish to fry in 2020. I missed swaths of the previous two seasons when I was overseas. I feel like I’ve been away from the game a long time.
But the start of baseball season seems particularly propitious this year. It is a season of new hope, slow to unfold but glorious in its undiscovered potential. And though baseball is indeed slow, as its critics are quick to point out, it is also the most optimistic of sports. A team has a chance to win until the final out. A second-string shortstop can be the hero of the World Series. In spring training, every player’s a star, every team a contender. This year, we all could use an extra helping of hope.
I hope the Red Sox win, but the outlook isn’t promising. Betts, Bradley, and Benintendi – maybe the best Red Sox outfield ever, in a history of outstanding outfields – are all gone. Nate Eovaldi and Eduardo Rodriguez have started 297 major league games between them. Neither has ever gone the distance. Not once.
Somewhere during the virus they snuck in a new rule that puts a runner on second at the start of every extra inning. What? It’s baseball’s answer to the shootout in hockey. Next thing you know, they’ll have pitchers only pitch the first one or two innings of a game.
The San Diego Padres are supposed to be good this year. They’ve never won a World Series, and have appeared in only two. I lived in San Diego from the year before their first Series (1984; lost to the Tigers in five), to the year after their last one (1998, swept by the Yankees). I voted to build the downtown park where the Padres now play, but I have yet to see a ballgame in it.
The Seattle Mariners are the only big-league that has never even been to the Series. They may not be any good, but this is baseball, where Impossible Dreams come true. The Astros and Nationals have broken though in recent years; it’s Seattle’s turn.
My prediction: Padres over Mariners in seven. The final game will be decided when the last Mariners pitcher enters the game in the 19th inning and double-balks the freebie runner home from second.
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