The Sports Curmudgeon®

I promise. There will be no cheesy April Fool’s entries in here today.

The baseball season has begun. Fortunately, the Minnesota Twins play in a dome because there were snow flurries in Minnesota yesterday. In the song, Take Me Out To The Ballgame, the singer asks you to buy him/her peanuts and crackerjack - - not hot chocolate and foot warmers. Spring has been here for almost two weeks now; baseball has begun; that can only mean two things:

1. The weather is about to get warmer.

2. The deadline for filing your income tax return is drawing nigh.

ESPN and its affiliate networks gave us an orgy of baseball yesterday from all over the country. Brent Mussberger called the game from Wrigley Field - - “You are looking LIVE at Wrigley Field …”

Memo to Brent: Of course, I’m looking live at Wrigley Field. If I were dead, I wouldn’t be looking at anything except the inside of the cover of my coffin.

The Washington Nationals opened the NL season on Sunday at home in their new park. Tickets were on sale for that event in the “secondary market” at huge premiums. Seats in right field with a face value of $10 and a view best exploited with a spyglass were available for $175. What makes this a bit strange is that the announced attendance was almost 2000 less than the seating capacity of the stadium. What is stunning is that the Nationals – in the city that was starving for baseball for more than three decades – did not sell out their opening game in their new playpen on a weekend.

In San Diego, the Padres have increased the price of buying a beer at the ballpark. A 16-ounce “domestic draft” will now cost $6.50. No, I am not going to fly off into a fit of righteous indignation about how that is price gouging or anything like that. The reason I mention it at all is the hugely disingenuous way that the Padres have chosen to explain why they are charging this amount for a beer. (By the way, “premium brands” will cost up to $9.00 a pour this year.) According to the Padres, they do this as a part of their efforts to create and maintain a family-friendly atmosphere at the game. Here is what their executive vice president for ballpark management had to say:

“We don’t want to do anything to encourage excessive alcohol consumption. We want people to have a beer or two if they like. We’re not interested in attracting people who want six or eight beers.”

Sorry, I do not believe that buncombe any more than I believe that a sound investment strategy for retirement is the regular purchase of Lotto tickets.

As the season gets underway, prepare yourself for an unrelenting barrage of sentiment about the last days of “The House That Ruth Built”. While you are cleaning the goo off yourself from that barrage, remember also that the other NY baseball team is also leaving its home this year in favor of a new park. There will be no gushing over the closing of Shea Stadium - - and that comment has nothing whatsoever to do with John Rocker’s goofy comments about the neighborhood in which Shea resides and/or the subway one has to take to get there. Shea Stadium was and is a miserable place to go out and to try to enjoy a baseball game. It is worse than The Vet was when The Vet was very properly reviled as a fetid venue. It is as bad as – and maybe even a bit worse – than RFK Stadium is. Eva Peron asked Argentina not to cry for her; no one could make me think of crying over the loss of Shea Stadium.

Suppose for just a moment that Barry Bonds does not find a team willing to sign him to a contract. That would mean that five years from now the Hall of Fame voters would see arriving on their ballots for the first time Bonds plus Roger Clemens plus Sammy Sosa. (Maybe Curt Schilling too if his arm injuries end his career…) Just as newspapers write obits for famous people in advance of their death and put them in a file, I suspect that sportswriters will start to make notes for the barrage of columns that will come when that Hall of Fame voting is imminent.

Randy Johnson has 284 wins in his career. He is 44 years old this year and he has had two surgical procedures on his back in the past three years. He will try to get to 300 wins this year. I have not found an online sportsbook with that as a proposition wager and that does surprise me a bit.

Speaking of pitchers who have injury issues, Mark Prior will begin the 2008 season on the 60-day disabled list. If you are surprised to hear that, you will probably also be surprised to learn that Thursday will come after Wednesday this week.

When I was in high school, I had a teacher tell me that there were only three things that one could count on in life - - death, taxes and having to take English every year in school. Well, maybe something else has emerged that you can count on in the same way. What confluence of events might it take for the Toronto Blue Jays to finish anywhere other than in third place in the AL East this year? I don’t think they can displace either the Yankees or the Red Sox from one of the top two slots in that division absent some cataclysmic events regarding one of those rosters. Similarly, I cannot see how the Blue Jays can possibly finish below either the Rays or the Orioles.

Finally, here is a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald about the Washington Nationals opening game last Sunday:

“President Bush is scheduled to throw out the first pitch at the Nationals’ new ballpark Sunday. The Marlins will have representatives scouting Bush as a possible fifth starter.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…