Opening Day: One of The Greatest Days of the Year

I love baseball.

As long as I can remember I have been in love with the sport and, of course, my favorite team the New York Yankees. I started playing the game at 5-years-old. However, unlike most kids across the country at that age I never played t-ball. In my hometown we had a pitching machine that fired actual baseballs at you from about 40 feet away. It was a spinning wheel on a tripod about four-feet-high. I remember one time my friend Walter ran right into the machine while going after a pop up - he looked like Freddy Krueger for about a month.

I kept playing baseball every summer until I was 19, when work and the lack of a local team kept me from playing. Today, with the exception of the occasional beer-tainted softball performance, my playing days are unfortunately over.

Yet every year on this day I get as excited as I was 20 years ago, back when I would read biographies on Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Babe Ruth.

I'll spare you all the rest of the tired cliches; the hope springing anew etc.

Yet today's terrible Yankee performance aside, I'm pretty optimistic about the pinstripes chances this season. Assuming the team can stay healthy, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better rotation in baseball with Sabathia, Wang, Burnett, Pettite and Chamberlain on the hill; there's no off day for opponents. Granted, I know that this isn't Andy Pettite circa 1996 or even 2003, but the guy is still a big game pitcher and will rise to the occasion (see 2007 ALDS losing effort).

On the offensive side I have a little more cause for worry. The Texeira addition was a great move, but the bottom of the lineup is weak. Nady is a .280 25 HR 85 RBI hitter at the absolute best, i'm still not convinced Corey Ransom is an actual person and Brett Gardner, while extremely quick and showing improvement every day has a lot to prove. Combine that with an injury prone Hideki Matsui, recovering Jorge Posada and a Robinson Cano in limbo and you really are banking on the top three (Jeter, Damon and Texeira) to carry the offensive load.

I don't even want to get into Alex "Total Embarassment" Rodriguez. That will be another post for another day.

Yet, if this team gels (and based on the dumping of some of the more abrasive personalities Giambi, Abreu and Mussina it's definitely possible) they are going to be contenders.

But enough about the Yankees...

One thing I can never understand is people that say baseball is boring. Now as you all slap your collective foreheads, hear me out.

Ok, I'm not as oblivious as to not admit that baseball is a slower moving game from a tempo perspective than soccer, hockey, basketball and football. From that perspective it is a "slower" moving game.

However, to call baseball boring in my opinion is the telltale sign of someone who doesn't really understand the game.

Baseball is really a thinking-mans sport. On every pitch every single player on the field needs to know what they are going to do and what everyone else on the field is going to do, when the ball is hit to them.

You need to know exactly how to pitch to each hitter, how to get him out on a 2-1 count with runners on second and third base. The hitter in turn, needs to know exactly what that pitcher has up his sleeve, whether that pitch that's coming at him right now at 85-miles-per-hour is gonna cut away from him and, if it does, whether or not he's going to be able to slap at it the opposite way for a base hit.

It's a chess match, with one team trying to think not only about the hitter at hand, but two or hitters ahead.

It's a chess match, but every move is determined in the blink of an eye.

For someone to say that baseball is boring is simply watching it the wrong way. You can't watch baseball like you would a hockey game, there simply isn't enough stimulation there for you. However, if you really study the game and understand everything that's going on, there is no sport that offers the excitement and intrigue that baseball does.

For those of you who are looking for some eye candy in this post, check out my fantasy baseball team: