It's That Time of Year

Everybody has that one friend. They aren’t a sports fan, they are a sport fan. It’s the guy who watches the completely meaningless Raptors game instead of playoff hockey, or the guy who insists on watching the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in July instead of watching Italy and France in the World Cup final. When it comes to baseball, I am that fan. So with the Olympics in full swing, the only thing that I am interested in is pitchers and catchers reporting to camp and all the great rituals that accompany it.

One great ritual of spring is the reappearance of baseball games on television. This usually occurs once a week starting in mid-March in the form of a Saturday afternoon game. As I mentioned above, these games are not for sports fans but rather only for baseball fans. Only someone who truly loves baseball could put up with (what is often) shots from a single, stationary camera behind home plate and the split squad rosters that ensure you won’t see a single player that will make the opening day roster play more than two innings. These games are so lax that the players don’t even wear real jerseys. Despite these glaring shortcomings, there is nothing like watching that first game of the year to remind myself that I really only watch football because there is nothing else on.

Another great ritual of springtime is the requisite smack talk that occurs between rival teams. This year has been so exception. Not sure who the best pitcher in the NL East is? Don’t worry, Johan Santana will tell you. Not sure who will win the division? No sweat, David Wright knows. All that is missing so far in the Mets/Phillies smack talk is for Roy Halladay to tell a ‘yo momma’ joke aimed at Carlos Beltran. As ludicrous and misinformed as these predictions can be, they a little drama can keep things interesting during a time of year when starting players only play a few innings a game.

Spring training is a great time of the year to be a baseball fan for many reasons but the biggest and best of these reasons is that everything is still possible and nothing has been proven untrue: Rookies will perform the same way in the majors that they did in the minors, veterans won’t regress, injured players will return to form, and yes that awful year he had last year was just an aberration (or the last few in the case of Lyle Overbay). Whatever the uncertainty looms large for your favorite team, the cold hard realities of the major league season have not yet kicked in and deflated their chances. For the Jays this means that as of right now Ricky Romero can contend for the Cy Young, Shaun Marcum will return to form, Travis Snider will hit 40 homers, Vernon Wells will earn half his money and Jose Bautista will not play like Jose Bautista.

For many teams not expected to contend (and the Mets), the season can be a long one, but when spring training starts, we all still have the same record. This makes spring training worth watching not only for the rituals and but the hope and excitement that may not be there for fans of every team come June or July. And that’s what makes spring training exciting for all sports fans.