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.