By Tim Robertson
The New Year’s Ball officially drops Sunday. It starts with a goodbye kiss to the significant other and an admission that the fan may only see them once a week between now and October – or September for Royals fans.
Forget what the groundhog said about his shadow weeks ago. Millions of Americans, along with a few Canadians, comprehend the importance of this week’s celebration of spring.
On Sunday, the last major league pitchers and catchers will report, with full roster workouts for all 30 teams beginning by Feb. 25.
Baseball will lead the millions through three seasons, always there for an escape. The Red Sox will wake Boston up at 10 a.m. on Patriot’s Day, the Big Unit returns to Yankee Stadium in June, and San Francisco hosts the All-Star game, (although that Rockies-Royals series may not live up to the hype).
No sport compares to baseball. To watch the NFL, fans must wait until Sunday for their fix, and only get it three hours a week. NASCAR doesn’t count as a sport, and a fan never knows when NHL or NBA teams play.
Baseball makes a fan’s life better. Six or even seven days a week, someone can tune in to watch their favorite team for three hours of sheer bliss.
Click on SNY to catch the Mets go for their second straight division title. No team in the same division as the Braves has repeated as champion since the 1977 and 1978 Los Angeles Dodgers.
Or throw on the YES network for a classic rivalry game between the Yankees and Red Sox, as Boston seeks revenge against their arch-nemesis for the five-game sweep last August.
The 2007 season starts with more headlines, more questions and possibly the greatest amount of parity the game has seen in 20 years. No league champion has repeated in the 21st century.
Everyone knows the American League contenders: New York, Boston, Minnesota, Chicago and Los Angeles… blah blah blah. But which team will prevail in the mediocre National League? Every team – except, perhaps, for the Pirates, Nationals, and, yes, my Rockies – can win the pennant. With new faces on the Cubs, a dominant pitching staff on paper for the Dodgers, the reigning champions and upstart Marlins among many other transformed teams, the National League will provide September entertainment.
As even baseball-haters know, Bonds will receive all the attention. The enlarging steroids cloud hovers over his bald and aging head. Will 2007 prove a glory year for the polarizing figure with an all-time homerun record? Will someone leak grand jury testimony, either publicly convicting or clearing Bonds? Although the Giants, Bonds and commissioner Bud Selig continue to fight over clauses in the slugger’s contract, thus leaving him officially off the Giants’ roster, Bonds will sign, eventually. After all, super-agent Scott Boras wants his money.
“Dice-K” serves as this column’s final question. Can Daisuke Matsuzaka live up to his hype, his mystique or is he just a myth? The $103 million “rookie” pitcher and his famed gyro-ball land Saturday in the Grapefruit League trying to crush any naysayer, mostly from Bronx.
Whereas hot stove season provided interesting debates, jersey changes and proof owner’s checkbooks can write infinitely large salaries, nothing compares to the nostalgia that fills a baseball fan every year around Valentine’s Day.
Love certainly fills the air around this time of year. Unfortunately, for the significant other, a fan saves that love for the sweet voices of ESPN’s Gary Thorne and the Dodgers’ Vin Scully.
These voices play the role of Dick Clark for baseball fans’ New Year. Arizona and Florida replace Times Square. Those green glitter-covered 2007 headbands end up in the garbage, while the authentic, fitted hat replaces it.
A week after St. Louis earned their 10th World Series title, baseball fanatics, such as me, started counting the 107 days to the New Year, the new season.
Long-time Cardinal and Cooperstown inductee Roger Hornsby may have said it best: “People ask me what I do in the winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”