Total Fail on Baseball

Swing and a miss.  Man I suck at being a baseball fan these days.  Even more, I think, than I suck at actual baseball.  Not only have I failed at following the Mets on this blog, but I realized how far I'd fallen when I took a look at league leaders and thought to myself, Joey Votto?  Who the hell is that dude?  Eh, just an MVP sorta candidate playing at a near-Allstar level for the last two years.  Well, anyway, it's all made me feel the dumbass and helped me realize just how much more attention I should be paying to what was once my favorite sport.  Here's to old new beginnings again, or something like that.

Mets Report for Period 1 Delayed

Sorry, sorry.  I'm obviously late on the report out on the Mets for my defined first period.  My inability to take full advantage of the wonderful information on baseball-reference.com is keeping me from organizing all the information I'd like to use.  I'm either going to give up on 2-week periods and focus on months, or overcome the tech hurdle and start reporting as I promised.  I'll let you know within a few days. 

Incidentally, any baseball fan should get acquainted with baseball-reference.com, it is a wonderful collection of baseball information dating back to the very beginning and kept up to date with play-by-play for each game.  Take a look, you can literally find almost anything you could be looking for.

Following Baseball

If it was those halcyon days of 1999 and you looked me in the eye and sternly said, "John Dwyer, you're going to one day start a blog and nearly half of your posts are going to be about basketball."  I would have laughed and told you just what you had coming.  As it happens, I grew up a baseball player, and that means I grew up a baseball fan.  My least favorite sport in my early years was basketball.

Sure, I'm from the Peoria area, and that means I was aware of Bradley basketball and nominally a fan.  Sure, I grew up with the Bulls owning NBA championship after championship behind His Airness and was a nominal fan... But my limited talents and all of my love were focused on baseball, with a healthy sprinkling of Chicago Bears and a minor obsession with CART racing thrown in for flavor.  But my first love was the New York Mets.  Mets?  Yeah, I dunno either.  I should have been a Cubs or Cardinals fan like everyone else.  My best theory is that it was a form of childish rebellion against the 'rents who were Yankees fans.  Or maybe it was because they were kickass during my formative years.  I honestly don't remember, but am positive that I've been a Mets fan my whole life.

Well, lucky you.  That means you get to enjoy baseball with me.  I've been trying to figure out how best to "cover" baseball.  Basketball has been easier than maybe I thought it'd be.  The games are dramatic, and at least in college, each one is incredibly important.  Baseball can certainly be dramatic, but with a 162-game season, the games are essentially unimportant and anything you see in any given game could be extremely misleading.  So, what I've decided to do is "report" on the season in two week chunks.  Try to study each two week period and see what it is I find.  I've never paid attention to baseball in this way and maybe I'll learn something.  That's not to say I won't post here and there about significant happenings in baseball or whatever, but there will be some structure.

So... Period 1 has begun.  Apr 4-17.  Mets are already 1-1, by the way.  They're old and they're expensive.  I think it's going to be a tough year, but it's the beginning of a new season so I'm hopeful anyway.