Closing Day.

That's what today is. Guess that makes tomorrow Opening Day. Yup. Pretty much. 12 teams get baseball officially started up tomorrow. And I'd be remiss if I didn't weigh in on at least a thing or seven.

————————

There's a lot of chatter out there about the Red Sox winning it all this year. Easy money is what that is. It's about as good a bet as any in baseball. Last year they were devastated by injuries, and still finished 16 games above .500. This year, if they're pitching staff can stay healthy, they own an an offense that could be scary good.

But that's not where I'm headed. There's another team garnering a fair amount of chatter, too. A team that a lot of people are expecting good things from this year. And I can't say it's not because of a good deal of unintended spin. I'm talking about the Pittsburgh Pirates. They're the owners of a major-sprots-league-best 18 consecutive losing seasons. A handsome number of know-it-alls connected with baseball are suggesting, hinting, alleging (read: definitely not "predicting") that might change this year. I think it's because the Bucs are all decked out with a new manager this year. One who knows a little something about getting a team to the World Series sans expectations. Clint Hurdle did just that with the Rockies in 2007 when they won 21 of they're final 22 regular season games that year, and went on to sweep the first two rounds of the playoffs, only to have their brooms turn against them in the World Series by the Red Sox.

Nothing against Clint Hurdle or the Pirates. If I have a second-favorite team, it's the Pirates. And I like Hurdle a lot, as baseball guys go. But I think that's where some of this misplaced spin is sourced. I don't think the Pirates have a pitching staff worthy of consistent run abatement. Although they do have a good core of hitters. And one of the best center fielders I've seen in Andrew McCutchen.

————————

I'm really geeked up about the Rockies' chances this year. Like any team that captures a World Series title, they've got to have a bunch of stuff go right for them this year, but they've got more depth right now than I can ever remember. To wit: Their last Spring Training game was actually what they call and Exhibition Game because it was versus their AA affiliate in Tulsa. The Drillers no-hit their Major League elders for eight innings, and won 5-3.

————————

If I were forced to pick a team to watch out for—a team who, like the Padres last year, stays unexpectedly competitive till the last day of the season—it would probably be the Florida Marlins. Their pitching staff is dominant. And they've got Mike Stanton, who many scouts project 40+ home runs out of this year. If they were in the NL Central, they would almost certainly contend.

————————

Speaking of the NL Central, what a bummer for the Brewers, who plucked Zack Greinke from the Royals this off-season, only to find out that he will be nursing an injury until early May. Good thing they're in the NL Central. Could be the worst division in the bigs.

————————

The World Series champs Giants announced their opening day roster today and it features rookie Brandon Belt at first base, for whom they designated Travis Ishikawa for assignment. The guy's so young and inexperienced at this level that I'm pretty sure his Little League team just stopped practicing together a couple months ago. I'm not convinced this was the right move for them. But when you're coming off of a World Series win, you can do no wrong. Maybe that's why so few teams actually repeat the feat the following year.

————————

I saw some buzz today about how the Rockies installed some new purple lights atop the outside of Coors Field. They look pretty cool. But no one's talking about how they switched those ubiquitous dimpled floor matt-like things at intersections from neon yellow to Rockies purple. Rode my bike by there the other day and crews were replacing them. Brilliant, I thought.

————————


Lastly, there's not a better time in recent memory for the Rockies to capture the hearts of local sports fans than now. The Broncos and Avalanche stink. And the NFL and NBA (and maybe even the NHL) are facing labor pains (sorry, couldn't resist) that could shut down those sports temporarily. How huge would the Rockies become in the minds of potentially erstwhile Broncos fans if they contend all year, and make a run at the World Series? Pretty darn huge, if you ask me.

Rankings, ranklings, and hankerings.

A couple weeks ago or so I opined about which teams will finish last in each division this year. Let's take a quick look at how my guesses compared to the recently-released predictions of Buster Olney in ESPN: The Magazine. I didn't guess team's records, but The Magazine did, so I'll show those in parenthesis.

AL East:
My pick - Toronto Blue Jays (79-83)
Their pick - Baltimore Orioles (77-85)

The reason I went with the Blue Jays to lose the battle of the birds is vindicated by something The Mag wrote in their synopsis:

The real drama could be at the bottom of the division, where the Orioles—who brought on slick-fielding shortstop J.J. Hardy, 40-home run threat Mark Reynolds and nine-time All-Star Vladimir Guerrero this off-season—might have the goods to snap a 13-year streak of losing seasons, longest in the AL.

Yeah, I didn't go with the idea of "might," but rather "will."

AL Central:
My pick - Kansas City Royals
Their pick - Kansas City Royals (69-93)

I love it when that happens. I have to mention, though, that this could be the last time in a long time the Royals finish last. They have stocked up such a tremendous trove of talent—both through trades, and by great player development—that they could realistically start to contend as soon as next year. And when they do, I expect them to continue to do so for years to come.

AL West:
My pick - Seattle Mariners
Their pick - Seattle Mariners (70-92)

So when do I start getting paid for this stuff?

NL East:
My pick - New York Mets (79-83)
Their pick - Washington Nationals (73-89)

The Mag actually picked the Mets to finish third, above the Marlins and the Nationals. This is just crazy. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Buster Olney. He is one of the most balanced and level-headed baseball guys out there. But what are you thinking, Buster? The Marlins have one of the best—and obviously under-rated—rotations in the game. The Nationals certainly are no threat to make a surprise run at a division title, but they are really pretty average. They have a maybe-a-tick-below OK pitching staff and above average (although not by much) offense, which means to me that they finish just below .500, in my opinion.

The Mets, on the other hand, are one jacked up bunch. They have no ace (or at least not until mid-summer when Johan Santana is expected to return), they just released their second baseman, José Reyes Luis Castillo, to whom they still owe six million dollars, and their ownership group is under constant scrutiny due to their involvement with that rapscallion Bernie Madoff.

In my defense, he has the Mets finishing only six games out of the cellar.

NL Central:
My pick - Houston Astros
Their pick - Houston Astros (69-93)

I would say that I don't mean to brag, if only it were true. Olney says:

The Astros have been teetering on the edge of disaster for years and could finish last for the first time since 1991. That would mean progress for the Pirates.

Which is exactly what I said. Kind of.

NL West:
My pick - Arizona Diamondbacks
Their pick - Arizona Diamondbacks (73-89)

As my cousin once wrote, "I don't know much, and much of what I do know, I only think I know," but I like how I did against one of baseball's best banterers. Four identical picks, one close one, and one head-scratcher.

————————

I love it when managers say things on the record that they probably shouldn't really say. Like a couple years ago when White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said that he pukes every time he goes to Wrigley Field (as they do once a year as part of inter-league play to take on the Chicago Cubs). Well just yesterday in the April edition of Mens Journal, Orioles manager Buck Showalter (and former Yankees manager, it is worth noting) didn't have anything nice to say about their division foe Yankees, and specifically had this to say about Boston Red Sox' off-season acquisitions:

You got Carl Crawford 'cause you paid more than anyone else, and that's what makes you smarter? That's why I like whipping their butt. It's great, knowing those guys with the $205 million payroll are saying, "How the hell are they beating us?"

Ahhhh yes.

————————

Spring Training is about to give way to the whole raison d'être there's Spring Training in the first place. Major League Baseball's season opens on March 31st featuring six games. The Rockies start the following day, at home, against the Diamondbacks, with me in attendance. That's a week from tomorrow. Already I'm checking the forecast, and it's looking lovely. 70º and sunny. And I'll probably start out with a Maharaja Imperial India Pale Ale on tap from FreshCraft or The Falling Rock Tap House. Not that I'm putting too much thought into it or anything.

Why local is where it's at.

I have this thing about having to go to Home Depot. Just having to think about going there is obtuse. Being there is worse. Because when you get there, the parking lot is a freaking mess. It simply does not matter which of my local Home Depot's I decide to attend, each one is equally maniacal.

And then… you have to go inside.

Oh my god. Why did someone decide to build a shopping mall, and then at the last minute tear down all the interior walls holding up the roof and fill the newly-opened expanse with screws, lumber, paper towels, cement floors, people in orange aprons, dust, and candy bars and call it a Home Depot? Or Lowes? Or Super Walmart? Or to where ever the frick people are fricking flocking these days?

————————

Perhaps growing up in a small town which featured, quite proudly, a one-square-block-perimiter of retail stores from which one could buy daily wares—like screws, or paper towels, or orange aprons—finessed me into a guy who likes to be coddled when he buys something. Don't get me wrong. I don't need my hand held when I'm shopping. I'm that guy who actually likes to forage for what he's looking for. But when I have a specific need that needs filled, I need it filled by an aficionado, not a clerk.

But I don't think my growing up in said small town had everything to do with it. It's many things, including the fact that I run my own small business—more of a business-to-business business, but still. I know when to—and how to—tell the difference between a store owner who appeals to the masses, and one who digs the community. And it's not to be poo-pooed. I—and by "I" I mean my family—go out of my way to support local business owners. It's a big deal, really. Among the questions I ask myself:

Is there somewhere in our neighborhood we can buy the same thing or service?
Whose pockets do the profits line?
Why is there a scantily-clad mannequin in front of your coffee shop?
Are you a locally-owned bar, and what are the other bars you own?
When is your fine-foods market going to open up shop three blocks from my house?

————————

Supporting the locally-owned little guys help give your community a personality. This is important to the vitality of your neighborhood. Not just important, but mandatory. "What have we, if we have not a community?" I just made that up to sound like something Ben Franklin, or Thomas Jefferson, or someone really stately and smart would say. Because it's true.

Take, for example, the neighborhood liquor store I frequent. I walk in and I am usually greeted, if not by name, by a knowing smile. With a knowing regard for what it is I am hankering. Not unusually by a guy who knows my name. He knows my name because of my guerilla shopping mentality. Because I insist on disregarding the stores whose profits fill the pockets of yonder boys—corporations who probably don't give a shit about you.

Do me a favor. Think, for a second, about where you buy stuff these days. Probably online a lot. Probably at Walmart a lot. Probably at Starbucks a lot. But do you ever think about opportunities about buying stuff like that from proprietors who are also your neighbors? Look, I don't meant to get all ideological on your asses, but think about what you buy, and from whom you buy it, from now on. Why not buy your next steamed mocha half soy venti non-decaf grande latte from your local coffee purveyor? Because it will suck? Highly unlikely. Because it will take longer? It might; it might not. Because you are helping build a more socially verdant community? Yes.

And because it sucks that Home Depot drove so many neighborhood hardware stores out of business because those neighborhood hardware stores employed aficionados. Home Depot employs clerks.

Some stuff I thought of once. A little while ago. Like, today.

The Rockies had a double-header today at their still-brang-new Spring Training facility in Scottsdale, AZ, which has been Bantered About By One here. I don't have the figures at my fingers (which is to say, I'm too lazy to do the research to find them—which the Banter of One will hereafter refer to as "research") as to what the record is for a double header at their erstwhile Spring Training facility in Tucson, AZ (Hi-Corbett Field), but I would be happy to buy you dinner if you can prove to me that it was greater than today's combined attendance of 23,600.

It seems to me, from research I've gathered, that attendance at most ballparks, in the Cactus League at least, has been baron. But not at Salt River Fields. No siree. Seriously, the Rockies basically pulled off two sellouts in one day. In One Day. Even weekday games at Salt River Fields are faring better than their Cactus League counterparts, according to my research.

Indeed, according to this article, attendance is trending upward in the Cactus League. And I especially like how it doesn't even credit the Rockies in this trend:

"This year, the elevated number of attendees can be attributed primarily to two factors: the Arizona Diamondbacks, who are playing their first season in the Valley after moving their spring-training home from Tucson, and the San Francisco Giants, the 2010 World Series Champions…"

See, the Rockies share Salt River Fields with the Diamondbacks. And the Diamondbacks call Phoenix their regular-season home. I have this sneaking feeling that if the Rockies and their entire slate of Spring Training competition Spring Trained in Denver (provided the weather allowed them to do so), attendance for the Rockies would be sensational. Sensational, and all the synonyms you can come up with for sensational. To wit: During the 2010 regular season, Colorado averaged greater than 10,000 per game more than the Diamondbacks. Even in 2001, the year that the Diamondbacks won the World Series, the Rockies still out-attended them by an average of over 5,000 fans per game. Now that's research backed by some serious research.



————————

The AppleTV is a really cool gadget. Especially now that its most recent software update allows it to stream to me my MLB.tv subscription. My wife and I took our dog for a long walk in City Park, after which I camped out on the couch and watched the Giants and Dodgers do some Spring Training battle. And then later in the day I kept track of the Rockies and Diamondbacks tilt. All on the 46 inch TV in the living room, as opposed to the computer.

So I've got that going for me.

The "Iowa thing" and Baseball vs other sports.

Got really into a college basketball game tonight. Accidentally. I didn't mean to.

Had reason to be at a bar tonight. Not that that's a stretch in and of itself, mind you, but the majority of the people I was there with I had never met. All the while, a local small college basketball team was competing to join the March madness thing I used to follow and still hear about from time-to-time. One of the guys in my group was extra interested because he and his wife were introduced to one another by the guy who happened to be a coach of one of the two teams (The University of Northern Colorado Bears).

My sports-watching background is such that if I get interested in a contest of non-baseball proportions, I still become vested, and yearn to learn who wins and who loses. I get drawn in. For better or for worse. But this game was exciting not just because the guy I was hanging out next to knew a coach, but because the guy I was hanging out next to was also from Iowa.

There's something about people from Iowa. It's not like we had any mutual Iowa friends, or were back-of-the-hand familiar with each other's hometown. In fact, we weren't even the same age. But put a couple strangers at the same table who are obligated to spend a few hours together and have them both be from Iowa, and you've got a recipe for camaraderie. I can't explain it.

It's like those octogenarian WWII or septuagenarian Korean War veterans you see from time-to-time who wear those navy blue hats ordained with ornamental embroidery signifying their time in a certain infantry or battalion or whatever. (I'm not taking for granted veterans, or military personal in general, I just don't have a proclivity to such things and therefore can't quite describe it.) Put two strangers from Iowa in a bar who both know they're going to be in each other's company for a few hours, and suddenly you have two guys who may as well have been in each other's wedding.

————————

So it was that I found myself watching—and rooting for—the University of Northern Colorado Bears to win a game that would garner them entry into the dance, or show, or whatever they call it. It was a game that was close down to the last half-minute or so. And in the end UNC did indeed earn their first-ever berth to said dance.

But it got me thinking about a subject that has no shortage of dialogue over the decades. About how this game had a gripping sense of urgency about it. Especially as the game got closer to the end. Much in the same way a close football contest might keep a viewer on edge until the clock runs out.

Until the clock runs out. The clock runs out and, sans a tie, the game ends. In baseball, when the clock runs out.... Wait. In baseball, there is no clock. Save for the one that tracks the duration of the game for no other purpose than that of posterity. No, sir. There is no governing clock in baseball. None.

And that's kind of cool, you have to admit. Because baseball games tend to average about two-and-a-half to three hours. Any longer than four, and they makes the news. Like when the Colorado Rockies and San Diego Padres battled for 22 innings, for over six hours, back in April 2008. At the time, it was the longest game since...

The longest-ever game in MLB history was an eight hour-six minute contest between the Chicago White Sox and the Milwaukee Brewers (then of the American League) in 1984 that went 25 innings and was eventually won 7-6 by the Pale Hose.

That's like two-and-a-half games. In one game. Even when other sports go into overtime, or sudden death, they're not likely to extend fifteen minutes beyond regulation.

————————

So I'm just saying... look how unique baseball is because of this. And don't get me wrong: there is a ton of urgency in a baseball game. The best chance for a team to nudge ahead and stake its claim to victory could just as easily happen in the first inning as the last. Or the 22nd, for that matter.

I mean, it's cool the Bears are in the Dance and all, and I hope they fare well as a 16th seed, and at least don't get blown out—and maybe even pull off an upset. But regardless. If you watch, you will no doubt—and uncontrollably—have your eye on the game clock. And while you're doing that, every once in a while, think about how baseball has no game clock whatsoever.

What's wrong with the Phillies.

The Philadelphia Phillies probably made the biggest news this offseason with the surprise signing of left hander Cliff Lee. He joins a rotation of 19 other aces. OK, maybe not 19. But two or three, for sure, in Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels, and Roy Oswalt. Joe Blanton rounds out a rotation that is mighty, make no doubt about that.

Their offense, however, is not mighty. It's not mighty because it features no one who bats righty. Not true, but it sure rhymed nicely. And it's not too far off the mark. The Phillies lost their best right handed bat (Jayson Werth) to free agency, and now have maybe three in the lineup, counting the switch hitting Shane Victorino and Jimmy Rollins. The guys who batted the Phillies to the playoffs in 07, and the World Series in the two subsequent years—sluggers like Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, and Chase Utley—just ain't bringing it like they used to. Every Phillie fan to this day has the look on Howard's face when he struck out looking to end the 2010 NLCS etched in their memory, and if they tell you otherwise, they're lying.

Point is, the Fightin's don't hit like they used to. For the worse. But they don't pitch like they used to, either. For the better. And they say pitching is what wins baseball games. However, because they lack offense I see them losing low scoring games more than they'd like. And getting beat in the late innings more than they'd like. And if closer Brad Lidge struggles like he's been known to, watch out.

Nope. I don't see a division title being the lock the flock of Phils fans figure it will.

My predictions for each division's cellar dwellers.

It's not that I wallow in underachievement. And I certainly don't get off on other folks' misfortunes. But I was thinking today about predictions. About how all the big timers will put forward their carefully culled predictions for each division's finishers, from top to bottom. Most will jibe with the others, save for a couple disagreements here and there. And they will be close, generally, when the year ends, in their predictions. Because they have the capacity to send minions of reporters to each team's Spring Training facility—to Arizona, and Florida, and then back to Arizona, followed by one last stint in Florida—to do their highly calculated research—in person, most importantly—about which player may improve, recede, surprise, astonish, frustrate, etc.

But this nascent blog does not possess such fortitude. No, this blog has to go on good, old-fashioned guts. As in, gut feelings. And so it is with those feelings of the gut that I put forth my predictions of who will end up at the bottom of the rung. Yeah, it's a bit of a cop out. But it's still a prediction. And until The Banter of One can afford to send minions back and forth between Florida and Arizona, and forth and back, this is what we have to work with.

We shall start with the American League (I, for as long as I can remember, have liked to save the best for last).

AL East (See what I did there?): This one's gonna come down to two teams: Baltimore and Toronto. Bittersweet, too, because both are good. This is, hands down, the most miserable division in all of baseball, from a parity standpoint. That is simply not debatable. This is a division in which, last year, the fourth (fourth) place team finished eight games above .500. I don't see that changing in 2011(well, maybe the number of games above or below .500 will, but you know what I mean). But I do see the dweller at the bottom changing. Last year it was Baltimore. This year, it will be Toronto. In recent years, Toronto has had no problem scoring runs, but Baltimore won't this year, either, with the addition of Vladimir Guerrero, Derek Lee, and Mark Reynolds. Sure, the Jays still have last year's AL home run champion in Jose Bautista, but I don't see that being enough.
Dweller of the Bottom: Toronto Blue Jays

AL Central: This is a tough division to predict, too. Zack Greinke has left KC for Milwaukee and the more pitcher-friendly national league, but yet it's still a two horse race between Cleveland and the Royals. And it's closer than beans and corn bread. I'm having a tough time getting my hands around whose offense is worse, or whose rotation is worse. In other words: neither is very good. But I think it's gonna be the Royals who get the nod. They just don't have enough of either. And Cleveland has some guys who can mash. Like Shin-Soo Choo. And if Carlos Santana remains healthy and stays on the vaunted baseball trajectory he's been projected to ride, guy's gonna hit. And then there's the Grady Sizemore situation. He swears he's coming back to his old form this year. So it is that I go with the Royals to end up at the bottom.
Dweller of the Bottom: Kansas City Royals

AL West: This one's gonna come back and bite me, I worry. Cuz it just feels so easy. It's gonna be the Mariners. I don't see any way around it. The Angels aren't much better than they were last year because of a net subtraction during the offseason (Hello. My name is Vernon Wells.). But they didn't suck last year. They didn't compete like everyone thought they would, but they didn't suck. The A's are way better because of a great young pitching staff, and a guy nicknamed Godzilla. And the Rangers went to the World Series last year. So I'm going with the Mariners, but I really worry about the Los Angeles Angels. Partly because the reigning Cy Young winner still plays for the Mariners and I'm pretty sure he gets better run support than he did last year.

Dweller of the Bottom: Seattle Mariners

NL East: I don't see how we keep the Mets out of the cellar this year. The imbroglio surrounding their ownership situation, not to mention their lack of starting pitching and offense, really hamstrings them. I don't even know what else to say. I guess Washington could pose somewhat of a threat, but that's patently unlikely.

Dweller of the Bottom: New York Metropolitans

NL Central: It is with great pleasure that I predict that the Pirates do NOT finish last in the division. Nope. Houston has its own ownership issues to deal with this year (though they pale in comparison to the Mets and Dodgers), and really are dilapidated, both on the mound and at the plate. Plus, their projected starting catcher, just today, was likely lost for the season.

Dweller of the Bottom: Houston Astros

NL West: Similar to the West in the AL, I'm worried here. The obvious choice is Arizona. They're fortified offensively, no doubt, by subtraction. They lead the league in strike outs last year, and the culprits have gone to other pastures. But no pasture is without manure. And the manure in this lineup is inconsistency. Same with the pitching corps. New manager Kirk Gibson is super psyched about new closer JJ Putz, but my question is, what is the advantage of having a great closer if you never have the lead going into the ninth? But hold on. I'm not sure the Padres won't challenge the DBacks. They lost a starting pitcher. But more importantly, they lost one of the best left-handed hitters in the business in Adrian Gonzalez. So there's no one to protect in their lineup. That gives opposing pitchers more leverage and latitude. Plus, last year's surprise ace, Mat Latos, kind of nose-dived at the end. I just don't see it being a great year for them. But I reckon it won't be that bad.

Dweller of the Bottom: Arizona Diamondbacks

Just you watch, I'll probably strike out on every count. Yeah, that pun was intended. But what if I hit a home run? Can't say I won't say I told ya so.

Some baseball thoughts I need to get off my chest.

Spring Training is underway, but it's barely a week old. I've already learned to pace myself. Make no mistake, though, I'm in the best shape of my life, and I'm willing to do whatever I need to do to help my team. To that end, here are some fragments of my noggin's contents:

————————

Talking to my dad yesterday, I said something like, "Well, you know baseball has started because the Cubs are fighting in their dugout." That got a good laugh out of him. But I wasn't really trying to be funny. Well, probably I was, but still.

In a game against the Brewers this week, Cubs pitcher Carlos Silva got scorched for six runs, many of them unearned due to three errors—just three of the fourteen errors the Cubs had committed through their first four games. Apparently he said something in the dugout, mostly to himself, about the lack of quality defense, but it was overheard by third baseman Aramis Ramirez, who himself committed one of the three miscues. A rhubarb ensued and the two had to be separated by coaches, and Silva was escorted to the locker room.

Aramis Ramirez, on the scuffle, in The Chicago Tribune, said that it's a long season and you're going to have ups and downs. That it happens everywhere. Hey, 'Rami. It happened during the fourth game of Spring Training. Fourth! Of Spring Training! When these things happen, they're typically in the heat of the dog days of summer. Oh, and one more thing. They don't happen everywhere. Mostly just with the Cubs.

And then Cubs manager Mike Quade said "Everything has gone kind of good, except for the obvious mistakes in the games." Aside from the fact that he goes on to use the word "donnybrook"—for which he gets high praise from me—what in the hell is this guy talking about? "Kind of good?" What is kind of good? Doesn't that mean bad? Certainly not good. Good is good, kind of good is, well, bad, in my opinion. Bet the Cubs faithful are really feeling good that Quade got hired as manager during the offseason, squarely pissing off fan favorite, Hall of Famer, and erstwhile Cub Ryne Sandberg when the Cubs decided not to bequeeth him the keys to the clubhouse.

————————

Freak injuries and baseball have been good friends for decades, so this is nothing new, but it is funny. Baltimore Oriole left-hander Brian Matusz is missing a start because of a wart that had to be removed from his throwing hand. It had to be removed because his attempt to treat it himself during the offseason did not work.

Now look, there's nothing funny about warts, and the above paragraph is decidedly not funny in and of itself. But when I go to ESPN's baseball home page and one of the headlines reads "Orioles' Matusz (wart) could miss spring start," I can't help but laugh.

————————

Tough break for ex-Rockies manager and new Pirates skipper Clint Hurdle. His best left handed reliever Joe Beimel (also a former Rockie) is out til who-knows-when with a shoulder or arm issue that is proving tough to diagnose, or at least to MRI.

————————

Rockies manager Jim Tracy the other day, while talking about closer Huston Street, who is trying to get his sinker dialed back in after he struggled with it—his "out" pitch—last year, said to The Denver Post "...he's an artist. You have to give an artist a little bit of time and make sure all the bristles on his brush are right where they need to be."

Not too many managers get quite so creatively descriptive.

————————

That's it for now. Keep an eye out for my division-by-division predictions. For last place. Yup. Just decided today that I'm gonna do a season-preview post unlike any other.

Black outs. And I'm not even drunk.

The Durlam family is now in its second year of having cut the cable cable. Well, technically, we cut the satellite cable. In other words, with the exception of baseball, there was nothing that we were watching regularly on TV that couldn't be had, we felt, via Netflix Streaming, Hulu, iTunes (purchase or rental), or the like, so we decided to try an experiment. We decided to ditch DirecTV and get our "TV" from the ditches of the internet superhighway.

We knew not everything we wanted to watch would be free, but we believed that over the course of a year, we would spend less than we did with DirecTV. As it turned out, we did. In fact, I kept a spreadsheet of all of our TV show / movie purchases, plus music and iPod Touch apps. The bottom line after a year was a little less than what we spent on DirecTV the year prior. So we basically got our music for free and iApps gratis.

Another reason it was easy to butcher the tether: generally speaking, I think that TV's pretty much a time suck. Yeah, there are several shows I've seen over the last few years that I'm genuinely glad I saw (Six Feet Under, Lost, Better off Ted, Pushing Daisies, The Riches, the first couple seasons of Chuck). But the idea of sitting in front of a TV, turning it on, and scanning through channels just to see what's on sounds about as fruitful as playing solitaire with a deck of 51 cards. 

So we now plan our viewing more proactively. We watch what we truly want to watch, or we don't watch anything. In fact, both my wife and I have read far more books in the last year than ever before. Hell, the fact that I've even started this blog could be partially credited to the increased reading I've been doing as reading is a more thought provoking use of time.

Anyway, all that is not really my point. If you're curious what we've done right during this transition, and what we've done wrong, leave a comment—I'd be happy to share.

————————

My concern is, of course, baseball. Specifically, MLB.com's $100.00 ($120.00 for "Premium") internet-only-viewing package one can purchase to watch, EVERYWHERE!, any and every baseball game being played at any given time (mlb.tv). Except for one that is being played by a team in your "local market," even if that team is playing on the road, and therefore not in its local market. I live in Denver, Colorado. My local market includes the Colorado Rockies. That's my team. The team whose games I really like to watch. But the blackout restrictions prevent me from doing that, unless I am out of town.

But at least I don't live in the midwest (anymore). There are 30 teams in Major League Baseball. If I lived in my hometown of Jefferson, Iowa, I would be unable to watch games involving the Cubs, the White Sox, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Kansas City, or the Twins. If none of those teams were playing each other on a given day, that would exclude me from watching six games involving twelve teams. Nearly half of MLB would be off limits to me.

Finally, I get to that which I've set out to rail. The Blackout. I understand a home sporting event not being televised in a local market if enough tickets haven't been sold. The team wants people in the seats, and I get that. But nearly all of the Rockies games (not just home games) are televised on FSN Rocky Mountain (soon to become ROOT Sports) or ESPN or FOX, whether they sell enough seats or not. Now, I do have an antenna hooked up to my TV, so I could watch a Rockies game televised on FOX, but I am unable (unwilling might be a better term, I suppose) to watch ROOT Sports or ESPN (ESPN3 notwithstanding).

Why doesn't MLB.tv offer a non-blackout package? As far as I can tell, the reason for the MLB to black me out from viewing a Rockies game is that ROOT Sports makes them. Because ROOT wants me to watch it traditionally. And I just do not get that. Why can't they offer their feed to MLB.tv just like they do to Comcast, DISH, DirectTV, Cox, and others? Let me watch it on my computer, but make me watch the commercials. I won't mind. You might think me crazy, but in our new set-up, I don't see many commercials, and I actually kind of miss them. Well, some of them, anyway.

When I watch a game that I'm allowed to watch on MLB.tv, and it goes to commercial break, nine times out of ten I get a generic screen with an MLB.tv logo and the text: Commercial Break in Progress. Are you kidding me? The sponsors who advertise during Rockies games are now missing me entirely. Yeah, I know they probably don't care about one guy, but more and more people are starting to get their video this way, so it would behoove them to start worrying about it.