It's Opening Day!

Ah, baseball's opening day. A time when father's and son's go to the ballpark to enjoy the national pastime over a bag of freshly roasted peanuts. It's the unofficial start of.....I can't do this. I fucking hate baseball with a passion. It is so goddamn boring. National pastime my ass. Once upon a time baseball was king in this country, but now the NFL rules, and that's not going to change anytime soon. I could sit here and talk about the lack of integrity in the sport, like how they looked the other way on steroids for a decade, but that didn't make me like the game any worse. It was kind of funny, though, how people acted like they had no idea that the entire league was juiced up. When I was a kid, power hitters were usually fat 1st basemen, like Cecil Fielder. Then all of a sudden you had shortstops that looked like they stepped off the set of Conan the Barbarian hitting 40 homers a season.

What really sucks about baseball is the length of the season. It just goes on forever, and I think it hurts the sport. With that many games, players are bound to take days off here and there, and not really give 100% on the field, and it's no big deal, there's always tomorrow. Step onto a football field or into a boxing ring not ready to compete, and you could fucking die. The season is so long, teams can go on a 15 game losing streak, and it won't necessarily end their season. Do that in any other sport, and your season is basically over.

Shortening the season would make the games much more important and therefore interesting, but it could never happen because of the stats. Everything in baseball revolves around stats. In other sports, there are intangibles that cannot necessarily be measured, that play a big part in the success of individual players and teams. But not in baseball. Baseball can measure everything. Things like team work have nothing to do with success in baseball because at the end of the day, it is actually an individual sport. You could be the biggest shit head in the world, and everybody on the team could hate you, like A-Rod or Barry Bonds, and it will have no affect on the game. All that matters is what you do when you get up to bat, and those guys had Hall of Fame careers. In the NFL, guys with bad attitudes don't last long. Even if they have all the talent in the world. Look at Ryan Leaf, Jamarcus Russell, and Jeff George.

Controversy and season length definitely hurt the sport, but at the end of the day, what hurts baseball the most, is in fact, baseball. It's boring. It's no coincidence that baseball and alcohol go so good together. And if you don't like baseball, you can't really get away from it. Have you ever watched Sportscenter during baseball season? It's like 50 minutes of baseball highlights and 10 minutes of anything else. It totally sucks. As soon as the basketball and European soccer seasons are over, there is nothing else to watch til football season starts again. Except for the Tour de France, which fucking rules.