[ 04-05-04 ] [ 8:15 p.m.]
[ A bit about baseball (and some other sports) ]

One of the most surprising thing about sports, especially baseball, is how much you can miss if you happen to sit out a season.

Baseball is an ever-changing sport. It really is. It's kind of like NASCAR in that respect - the season is so long that players come and go within the space of a few months, and you barely learn their names, faces, and numbers before they're packed off to AAA or some other ballclub salivating over his ability to pinch hit or his sub-3 RPI. But you roll with the punches - baseball fans follow the trades like NASCAR fans follow the driver switches, just because you don't want to sound stupid the next time your co-workers corner you at the bubbler. It happens with football and hockey too, and, to a lesser extent, basketball. Any sports fan knows that nobody stays in one place for long.

And I guess it's not so 'surprising', per se, but it is sort of shocking when you turn on the television to watch your favorite baseball team play and realize that you don't know a good three-quarters of the players because you didn't follow them religiously last year.

You may have already guessed that such a thing happened to me today.

I turned on the t.v. to catch the Brewers' game on Opening Day, and about the only player I knew (and may I say, he's still damn hot) was Geoff Jenkins. It kind of shocked me. Believe me, I heard about the Richie Sexson trade and I knew that he wasn't going to be there, but I had the fleeting sensation that he was back in Milwaukee when I saw the dude at first base wearing number 11. Then I realized that dude (Lyle Overbay) was waaaay too short to be Richie Sexson (who is 6'8"... of course, that's nothing to compare with Steve Novak, who is 6'10", but Steve Novak is a college basketball player, not a ML first baseman. I digress.)

So anyway, the Brewers ended up beating the Cardinals 8-6, and I got a good look at the 2004 Milwaukee Brewers (who already look better than they did the few games I caught last year.)

I really got into baseball when I was fifteen. Like any kid from Wisconsin, though, I was born and bred on Cheesehead Athletics, LTD. I am naturally a Packer fan (because if I wasn't, my collective families would be out for my head) and a Brewers fan. Since no one from Wisconsin understands basketball (that's the only reason I figure it's not as popular as football and baseball) not as many people care if you don't like the Bucks (but let's just say that Viking fans don't exist in our state without someone disliking them immensely for the football team they like.) Also, Wisconsin lacks a professional hockey team - a mystery to me; it's always cold here. (Isn't it amazing how some cities can have all four professional sports, like Chicago, when my state doesn't even have all four?) So the Packers and the Brewers are the biggies - if you're a native Wisconsinite, chances are you have parents and/or relatives who follow one or both of those teams passionately. (Also, most people in Wisconsin are race fans, owing to the mostly-rural geographical population spread... that, and all the racetracks.)

Anyway, my dad took me to Brewers' games when I was a squirt, but when you take kids to baseball games, you don't necessarily expect them to watch baseball. A baseball game is a less hostile environment than, say, a football game - that's why you see so many little kids at Miller Park nowadays, and not at Lambeau Field - but even though most kids pushed each other down the stairs during the game, I still managed to get hooked on the Great American Pastime. I played Little League Softball when I was seven (I was on the boys' team... but if you would have seen my haircut at that age, you would have thought I was a boy, too) but when I got to middle school, baseball died out and NASCAR really took over. (Vroom vroom.)

Then we skip some time (about five years) and we go to the spring of my sophomore year. I was fifteen and I still loved NASCAR to death. (Still do, as witnessed by shrine to Tony Stewart at top of diary.) Then I got sick off a really bad flu and was forced to lay around in bed for a week. (Pity.) Since there's usually really shitty daytime television, I watched Brewers games. And voila, my love for baseball was reborn.

Last year I didn't follow the sport as closely. In fact, I didn't follow any sport all that closely, except NASCAR (and I even stopped watching Totally NASCAR on FSN... *gasp*). I figure that it was an off sports year. But since about last November into this year, I have been on a sports obsession-mania.

Which is only fitting, because I sure as hell couldn't miss Opening Day, could I?

Damn, this was really long. Um...

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