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The Rog's Rant

Baseball season can’t get here soon enough

It has been a terrible off-season for major league baseball, with the steroids scandal continuing thanks to the on-going U.S. Congressional hearings.

I suppose they made for pretty interesting television in the United States, a nation that is preoccupied with people watching realty TV most of the time already. And they say any publicity is good publicity and to a certain degree, that’s true.

But I am far too busy making the time to live on own life to watch other people live theirs, which is why I have no time to watch reality television and had no time to watch Roger Clemens sweat like a pig and lick his lips in front of U.S. politicians all day. That and the fact that I “mis-remembered” it was on.

You might think a country which is fighting a war and that is facing record mortgage defaults by consumers, might some more important issues for its politicians to spend their time on than a made-for-TV drama like the hearings into performance enhancing drugs in baseball. Whatever.

Bottom line is I think it’s all a waste of time and money, I think most hundreds and hundreds of major league players were on the juice and that everybody in baseball knew it and didn’t care – and I still can’t wait for the baseball season to start anyway.

The best time of the year for me is April. I hate winter, so the fact that it’s getting warmer is reason enough for me to put the happy face on. It’s also the NHL and NBA playoff month and it’s the start of baseball season, which I always look forward to.

Watching Roger Clemens try and explain how he was a better pitcher and physical specimen at age 42 than he was at age of 32 didn’t interest me in the least, but seeing him reminded me pitchers and catchers have already reported to training camp.

Awesome. Couldn’t have happened soon enough for me.

I can’t wait to watch the Toronto Blue Jays finish third in the AL East, a position they have had nine of the past 10 years and richly deserved every one of those years. I can’t wait to see the Detroit Tigers win 112 games this year, which is my prediction, while the New York Yankees win 92.

I can’t wait to see the New York Mets choke again in the NL, and I can’t wait to see all of the major league writers baseball predictions become obsolete by mid-May (probably my own included).

I can’t wait for all of this because I am like most Americans and Canadians who watched the Congressional hearings for a minute and then shut it off.

I don’t care if players used steroids or not. I know they all did and if they are too stupid to know what they can do to you, that’s their problem. I’m too busy living my own life to worry about how long theirs are going to be.

And despite the fact that the steroids era warped and ruined all baseball stats forever, I don’t care. The hearings were a sham, but no bigger a sham than the entire era of career 10 home run hitters hitting 30, or guys in their 40s suddenly discovering the power swings. Besides, it appears a lot of pitchers were juiced up too, so isn’t it all just a wash?

I’m like a lot of baseball fans who yell “who cares!” about the whole thing because just like them, I love the game anyway. I like the smells, the sounds and feel of the sport so much, it can’t be ruined for me.

So “Play Ball!” I yell just as loud as “Who cares!” because I can’t wait for the start of the season once again, as I can’t wait every year.

I can’t wait because baseball means spring. It always has and it always will.

And spring means the end of winter, which is always a good thing – even Roger Clemens and the others can’t screw that up.

Comments on The Rant of February 3 on the Super Bowl:

“Why can’t the other leagues just follow the model of the NHL? If the other leagues were running the NFL, there would be 28 regular season games and six rounds of playoffs.” – Chris in Toronto

“The NFL leaves us wanting more, which is why the Super Bowl is the best and the league is the best. Go Toronto Bills!” – Gary in Hamilton.

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