I'm excited about the baseball season beginning as much as the next fan, but can I say I object to some of the high-falutin' crap that gets written about the game? And no, I'm not referring just to George Will's prose. Actually I blame Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer, his ode to growing up watching the Brookyln Dodgers that was published in 1972.
But seriously, some rather sophisticated people over the years and decades have written some absurdly maudlin stuff about the sanctity of the game, which lost its domain as America's favorite sport to football some time in the mid-1970s.
Look, I dig the game. It's my favorite sport — after college and pro football and pro basketball. But I digress.
The local ballclub, the Tampa Bay Rays, begin the season this Good Friday afternoon in a great position as they host the New York Yankees (whose payroll incidentally is their lowest since 2007, though they still spend more than anybody else in the game).
A lot of folks like the Rays to go far, such as ESPN the magazine, which predicts a rematch of the 2008 World Series with the Philadelphia Phillies. Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated predicts a rematch of the 2002 WS, with the California Angels playing the San Francisco Giants.
And there are some, like some Tampa Trib writers, who predict a Giants-Rays affair. As a San Francisco native who has lived in Tampa for a dozen years now, there would be nothing better to contemplate from this fan's perspective.
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2012.