Sorry, just getting ready for Mets opening day.
I'll be watching today, but my rooting muscles are stiff. Never did get to warm up much during spring training. The long-awaited United States victory in the World Baseball Classic might have gotten me into shape, if I'd known it was going on before it was over. Maybe if a game or two had been on TV somewhere I would have.
Other MLB teams started yesterday -- the Yankees not only lost their first game of the season, they lost the first game of the season, to Tampa. The Diamondbacks got a walkoff win against the Giants, and the Cards took a wild one from the Cubs. Today my team starts its drive to win its division.
More people are concerned with Gonzaga vs. NC tonight, but I've never been a fan of basketball or college sports. Maybe because my alma mater was not a Division I school. I think we played in a division so low it did not actually get a number. I think it was NCAA Division 😜.
I got excited about baseball when I was a little kid, but I had to learn how to watch it. No one in my family was into watching sports. I tried to enjoy it on my own, I really did, but I was kind of bored and no one explained to me the fine points of the game. Then the Mets went from being a powerhouse club to an embarrassment again and I gave up. Yet, despite this hardscrabble childhood I eventually came to love the game, although I have always been a terrible athlete.
You're wondering: how can such a fine hunk of manhood as myself be bad at sports? And yet it's true. It didn't help that no one around me taught me how to do anything sportswise -- there was precious little instruction in our public school and none at home. And I was a lazy kid anyway, preferring to read or watch the tube. To this day I have the coordination of a drunken panda with vertigo.
All this was the inspiration for a book you'll notice to the right, MacFinster II: MacFinster's Folly, the one with the big baseball on the cover. It's not a baseball book per se, but baseball is key to its comedic plot. Our hero, George Darmowycz, has one thing in common with me, and that's a complete inability to play the game. When he is chosen to participate in a million-dollar home-run hitting contest, he and his best pal Rex MacFinster wonder if it's some kind of setup.
As you can imagine, trouble ensues, and then some.
It's a sequel to MacFinster, but you don't need to read that to enjoy the second one. If you're of a mind, you could check out a sample chapter on Amazon or read the one I posted when it came out.
I am also considering running an essay in this space, one I wrote a few years back when an editor friend was looking for essays on baseball for a book he was compiling. His publisher ultimately passed on the project, and I've never done anything with it. It's got some painful memories and I've been a little reluctant to put it out on this blog, which I usually enjoy as a light or pensive project, not a gut-wrenching bleedathon. Still thinking about it.
Maybe if the Mets start the season poorly I'll want a gut-wrenching bleedathon. Failure is always an option for my boys in blue.
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