And so, after a long cold winter, or in the case of the Bay Area, a wet winter, the baseball season begins again this Sunday. This year, instead of the traditional opening night game, there will be three Sunday games: The Cardinals vs the Pirates, the Blue Jays vs the Rays, and my Mets will visit the reigning World Series champion Royals.
First of all: Nice touch by baseball tweaking the opening day schedule. It will be great to have the triple header to kick things off instead of the usual anti-climactic lone Sunday night game. Plus, baseball feels better in the day, especially to open the season. I don’t say this very often but…kudos to MLB!
Not only that, but we have three sexy match-ups. I don’t know about you, but I loves me some NL Central division teams and the Pirates have long been one of my favorites. So you have a classic match-up between two of the oldest teams followed by a game between two expansion teams. The Blue Jays figure to be a lot of fun this year and they have earned their slot in the opening day spotlight. Perhaps we’ll get a Joey Bautista bat flip which will insight another juicy Goose Gossage rant.
Finally we’ll have the Mets vs the Royals. This is the first time in 30 years in which I’ve gone into the season expecting the Mets to win their division. Usually the best I can hope for is for them not to embarrass themselves. This year, with the signing of Cespedes, and the return of their young, stellar pitching staff, the immediate future looks bright. By the way, when is the last time the two World Series teams from the previous season opened the season against each other? Answer: Never. Yet another nice move by the schedule-maker: finding a clever new spin on a hackneyed inter-league format.
Play ball!
The World According to Keitho 