Preseason puts a big hurt on baseball
Posted: Monday, March 31, 2008 4:18 PM
Here are five swings at the start of the regular season:
1. Just a radical thought but does anyone think spring training is too long? Just asking because we hit Opening Day with an insane number of injuries ranging from nagging ones to season-ending ones.
Too many contending teams start the year with major players sidelined. The season is already too long. The 162-game schedule is not designed for any doubleheaders, enough off days for teams and March openers.
Now spring training is five to six weeks with an absurd number of games. You think someone might commission a study as to the possible relationship between long springs and high injury counts, but then again spring training has become about money. Owners charge high ticket prices and pay the players minimal sums. That equation will be tough to change.
2. Here’s a quote from the New York Daily News: “Wrong is wrong. We are all making a good living in the game we love, the business we chose. But that’s biting the hand that feeds you. When you mess around with the credibility of the game that’s terrible. If you lose that (credibility) with the fans, you’ve lost everything. Cheating is cheating.”
That quote sounds like something that could have been said at any time during the last five years by anyone in baseball. Those words, however, came from an anonymous NFL executive talking about Belichick/Spygate. And no one screams for NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to act. Just imagine what the outcry would be towards MLB commissioner Bud Selig if this were a baseball matter. (I won’t stop beating this drum!)
3. Watching the Braves and Nationals open the season last night in Washington brings the realization that the long messy chapter of Major League Baseball in Montreal is finally closed. Nationals Park is the beautiful home that was long dreamt of by those who loved the game in Quebec. But it was never going to happen and Major League Baseball, after clinging to Montreal longer than it should have due to the ill-fated concept of contraction, has achieved another success story by bringing the game to life in a city long considered dead.
4. Outside the Northeast Corridor, away from the obsession with Johan Santana, Joe Girardi and Manny Ramirez there are some interesting early-season stories to watch: can the hopelessness of fans in Pittsburgh, Kansas City and Tampa Bay be soothed by decent starts? Will Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Mike Piazza land anywhere where injury strikes or will they officially retire? How does San Francisco react to life after 15 years of Bonds, a truly horrid spring, the prospect of empty seats and the sensitivity of the organization to the post-Bonds cleansing (the Giants wrote a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle after ballpark tours this week revealed the removal of most of the Bonds artifacts that decorated the park in recent years).
5. The best part of baseball season starts Tuesday morning: box scores.
