An Ode to Baseball on Opening Day

Is there anything better than Opening Day baseball?

There's just something about the smell of the grass, the blinding hue of your team's home whites, the wonderful sound when your favorite player really connects on a swing, and you just know that ball is going to leave the yard...

Baseball is beautiful, but random. Every time you tune in for a game, you might get to see something that's never happened before.

Maybe you'll see a pitcher's duel, a no-hitter, a perfect game.

Perhaps you'll be treated to a slugfest, in which prodigious hitters wallop towering home runs, and the final score would look more appropriate following a football game.

But even if that particular game doesn't make history, when you watch a Major League Baseball game you'll watch some of the most talented athletes in the world display their skills on the hunt for victory. Young phenoms and aging legends taking the field together in pursuit of a common goal.

Anything can happen when you watch a baseball game; the possibilities are truly endless, as unpredictable as the trajectory of a knuckleball.

And here we are, together on Opening Day: the cleanest of slates, with the summer months looming tantalizingly in front of us. Will your team make a run for the pennant? Will that promising rookie fulfill his potential? Will your favorite player be the MVP or Cy Young winner?

Or will things turn sour? Perhaps untimely injuries, ill-timed bullpen implosions, or clubhouse drama might derail your baseball hopes and dreams?

One lucky club might float through 2018 without issue, staking out first place on Opening Day and never relinquishing it. Some might lose five straight out of the gate, then stay in the cellar before selling off any useful pieces by July.

Most teams will spend the season in between, fighting it out over 162 game for a single coveted playoff spot.

I hope your team is successful this season (unless they're playing against mine). But even if your team is terrible, mired in a "rebuild," or taken down by injuries, I hope you find the wonder in baseball's small moments, in fan interactions and incredible defensive plays.

No matter the trajectory of your team in 2018, I hope you find time to step back during the long season and reflect on the beauty of baseball.

How lucky we are that we get to watch it, and debate it, and whine about it.

How lucky we are to have our hopes built up every year on Opening Day, even if the odds of coming out on top by October might be slim.

How lucky we are to have baseball. 

Seriously Unserious: Episode 3

Check out episode 3 of Seriously Unserious - a satirical look at real sports headlines.

Beauty in Numbers

When it comes to baseball analytics and particularly newer metrics (defensive measurements chief among them), there's a tendency within the baseball world to split into two camps: that which embraces the new world order wholeheartedly and without question, and that which rejects new methods, preferring instead to rely on conventional wisdom.

These two groups battle it out on online message boards and comment threads, in sports bars and in the stands, and even in clubhouses and front offices across the game. In most major league cities, the verdict is in, and the geeks have won - any major league manager or GM that ignores his stat department won't have a job for long.

But does the issue really have to be so black and white? The stat people argue that their counterparts are stuck in the past, too stubborn to embrace tools to improve their teams' performances. The old guard feels as if numbers and equations threaten to overshadow the simple beauty of a knee-buckling curveball or a soaring home run.

From where I'm standing, both sides have their merits. Statistical measures make baseball unique and allow for another dimension of quantitative understanding. But I fell in love with the qualitative parts of the game: the pop of the catcher's mitt, the smell of hot dogs cooking at the ballpark, and the looks on the faces of the players when one of their teammates does something incredible.

I play fantasy baseball, and I read FanGraphs, and I'm a loyal consumer of everything Bill James puts out - but the game I love wouldn't be the same if it didn't play out in real time, on real grass (except in Toronto and Tampa Bay), with real people.

I love the numbers because they describe and (sometimes) predict what I see on the field. It seems that the most successful teams neither abandon the old, go-with-your-gut ways of scouting, nor scorn the ever-changing field of sabermetrics. No, success comes when the old guard embraces the new, and the front office listens to conventional wisdom and innovative new techniques.

Ten years ago, you would never see OBP on a graphic for a televised baseball game - now even the most casual fan expects it as a baseline. But the traditional box score staples are still around, and the combination makes for a more complete baseball experience.

And as someone who practically goes into mourning between November and February, I'm always looking for a more complete baseball experience.

Expansion was inevitable - and it's not the end of the world

 I'm taking a class this semester called "History of U.S. Sports," and we actually had a discussion of playoff expansion a few weeks ago.  The professor broke it down for us: who benefits from playoff expansion, and who loses? First the beneficiaries: owners - with more games, they make more money, and cusp teams will be playing meaningful games deeper into the season; players - more players will get the chance to show their stuff in the postseason, and since many of them have playoff series MVP reward triggers in their contracts, they like this; agents - they benefit when their players do; Major League Baseball - more games is more hype, more advertising, and more money; small-market cusp teams - if you're a perennial second- or third-place finisher, this is going to energize your team and your fanbase; networks - more high-stakes games means more viewers, more advertisers, and more money.

So who loses? Big market playoff shoe-ins - teams like the Yankees or Phillies, who nearly always make the playoffs, don't want to see more competition in their way; fans - the more diehard, nostalgic fans see this as an affront (just as they did with the advent of divisional play in 1969 and the Wild Card in 1995 - fans always pine for the good old days, which tend to be whatever was happening when they became a fan).

You can see why the expansion will always win out: most of the beneficiaries are backed by the potential for big bucks, while the losers don't have much sway - diehard fans aren't going to boycott the expanded playoffs in large enough numbers to make up for all the casual fans who will find a one-game playoff infinitely more exciting and digestible than actually paying attention for 162 games (we should face it, as a culture, we love the potential for heroics and heartache in a high-stakes situation).

I actually like this new format (I know, I'm upsetting you, but hear me out): yes, one-game playoffs are inherently unfair, as any fan knows than an inferior team can beat a superior team in one game. But the format SHOULD BE UNFAIR to a Wild Card team who, by definition, is not as good as the Division winner. [I'd actually much rather see a balanced schedule, but that's a rant for another day.] 

The fact is that this will make winning the Division actually mean something - and it hasn't for quite some time.  Teams with the Wild Card locked up have coasted through September for years now, resting up their regulars and rendering the last month of the season essentially meaningless (thus cheating fans who buy tickets).  Under the new system, teams will want to avoid a one-game playoff at all costs, and will play meaningful baseball for longer.

At the end of the day, Major League Baseball is a business, and they will do anything that makes them more money. Playoff expansion has been profitable (in every American sport) every time it has happened. So love it or hate it, it's here to stay.

[And yes, I actually get college credit for discussing these things every week. Last class we discussed playoff expansion, Linsanity, Tim Tebow, and Teddy Roosevelt. I love you, Trinity College.]

Life, school, and baseball

Anyone uninterested in a post that's more about me than the Red Sox (I suspect that's most of you) can come back later for a reaction to the sacking of Tito.  Right now I need an outlet, and since this is my blog, I feel entitled to use the space for that - at least once.

This morning, I got up at seven to take the LSAT.  Through a series of unfortunate events (and several dimwitted and sleep-clouded actions on my part), I missed the test.  I was upset, obviously, but as I drove back to school, I realized that I was much more distressed about the fact that I wasted $140 (a sum I don't really have to throw away) than the fact that I wouldn't be sitting the exam.

Lately I've been thinking about the future (an inescapable pastime for a senior in college - especially in the current economic climate), and I'm suddenly not as sure as I used to be that I even want to be a lawyer.  It's always been my dream to work in baseball; I've always said I don't care what I have to do, as long as I can be around the game.

My first choice would be to earn a living in sportswriting, but you don't generally get offered a job at The Globe straight out of college, particularly if you don't have a journalism degree (TrinColl doesn't offer that major).  It used to be that you would pay your dues at a small local and/or regional newspaper, and then hopefully your if your work was good it would get recognized by a national publication and you would move up the ranks. Now, as many of you know, those smaller newspapers are in trouble, much more likely to be shedding payroll than taking chances on unknowns.

The next best thing would be to work for a team, in any capacity.  Baseball is a well known boys' club, steeped in tradition and notoriously difficult to break into. Given the game's established proclivity for hiring men, and especially former players, I assumed that (as a woman who last played even softball in high school) my best bet was to get a law degree and try to work with contracts, either with a team or for an agency.


In the last few weeks, I should have been studying for this test. I bought the review book, I had free time, but I couldn't bring myself to sit down and focus on it.  I just wasn't passionate about any of the material, and even less excited about the prospect of mortgaging my entire life away for three more years of education that I have no way of paying for.

I've always been so sure about my direction in life; I was a third grader with a twenty-year plan for my future, and now I'm floundering.  I'm sure this is nothing new, or even unusual, but it's particularly jarring for me because I have always known what my next step should be.

I don't flatter myself that I could make a living as a writer at this point in my life - I need a LOT more practice - and so I'm lost. I don't know where I should be looking, or what I should be doing, and I'm going to be dumped (ceremoniously, in a cap and gown, but still dumped) into the cold, cruel world in seven months.  The only thing I'm still sure of is my love for baseball, and the Red Sox (yes, even after this disgrace of a season).  I know I've been absolutely terrible at keeping up this blog in 2011, and I'm sorry. I hope to be better while I figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

[Also, for anyone who managed to slog through all that existential crap, I thank you. To show my appreciation, here's a video of Florida Atlantic and Western Kentucky baseball players putting on a show - during a rain delay.]

I love college...

Despite the many pitfalls to going to school in Connecticut (Y-FAB, for instance), there are some great advantages to being smack on the divide between Red Sox and Yankee territory.


This morning, my IR professor (whose baseball allegiances had previously been a mystery to me), was trying to explain the problem of indeterminacy in predicting the future of international relations. Simply put, it means that you can't predict certain things because their factors haven't yet fallen into place.

Getting more blank stares than usual, he decided to use a baseball analogy (if he hadn't waited until the last day to do so, I might have paid more attentions all semester).

"So, say you're asked to predict who will win the World Series in 2050. You might say the Red Sox, right? Because that would make sense... Or, if you're crazy, you could say the Yankees - although they do have all the money, but that's another story."

He went on to explain that through indeterminacy, it would be nearly impossible to predict something like that: the players won't even have been born yet. However, I was busy seeing IR in a whole new light: I've been writing my Cultural Studies essays about baseball all semester, and I did my final statistics projects on publicly funded baseball stadiums, but never had I looked at IR theory through a baseball perspective.

Thank god I picked a New England school. The fact that we're close to Yankee territory (with some Phillies fans here and there), just keeps things interesting.

Why I Hate Brett Favre

I had to drive to Newton today to accept an award on behalf of my mother, who passed away in August, and decided I would use the rare proximity to Boston to check out the (no longer new) radio station WBZ-FM 98.5 ("The Sports Hub"). Unfortunately for me, they were talking about football... and not even New England football, which I at least have a passing interest in, but Brett Freaking Favre.

The hosts didn't understand why there was such a "deep, passionate, all-consuming hatred" for Favre in New England; they rationalized why Green Bay fans might hold a grudge, but simply couldn't comprehend why those in the Boston market had such loathing for him.

Oh please, let me enlighten you:

As you all know, I'm not a football fan really: on a scale of 1 to 10, the Bruins and Celtics ranked at 6 and 7, respectively, the Patriots come in at about 2 (for reference the Sox are about a 10,272,004). Even though I really don't care about football, I hate Brett Favre.

If you want to retire, that's great: good for you, heck of a career; if you want to keep playing, go ahead: put your aging body at risk, I don't care. But whatever you do, do NOT clog up SportsCenter during baseball season with your mindless dithering. This just in, Brett, NO ONE CARES. In the summer, before work, I just want to catch up with how the west coast BASEBALL teams did the night before. I have a limited window of time in which to do this, and yet you insist on talking about yourself endlessly. July is one of my favorite times of year: hockey and basketball are over, and football hasn't started, so SportsCenter is all baseball (with the occasional mention of golf and tennis) - the Top 10 Plays, the standings analysis, and the commentary (this often results in an overdose of Derek Jeter, but at least it's baseball).

Celtics/Lakers, Indians/Red Sox, Derek Jeter, Steelers, D-Backs/Rays... What? How exactly does Jeter fit between Indians/Sox and Steelers?

But no, it has to be all about BRETT. He needs to have at least one press conference a week so that he can talk about how he might retire, but probably not, but he doesn't know who will sign him, but his old body can still play... blah, blah, blah. I just want my baseball! I can take the over-exposure of Favre during the football season; it's grating, but understandable. For the love of god, Brett, play or don't, but shut up!

Shut up, Favre, and I might like you... Probably not, but maybe.

Did that answer your question, 98.5?