DSPN Presents: Opening Day 2011

Posted by : Rev. Ouabache | Thursday, March 31, 2011 | Published in

Ladies and Gentlemen, Rejoice! For today officially signals the beginning of spring (forget that noise about the equinoxes). Yes, today is the official start of baseball season in the United States. For the foreign people in the audience, baseball is a little like Cricket but the pitchers are more likely to throw at your head, there are four bases to run to, and hitting it over the fence is extremely good.

I've always felt that baseball is the sport of choice for the goddess Eris. Mainly because there are so many statistics involved. I know that sounds boring to most people who don't know their OPS from their WAR or their ERA+ from their WHIP. But baseball is so interesting because of sample size.

Baseball season is ridiculously long. It starts today, the last day of March, and won't be over until last out of the World Series sometime in October. During that time every single team will play 162 games (plus playoff games). Every starting player will see around 4 or 5 plate appearances during each of those games. There will be roughly 120 pitches thrown during those contests. On each pitch, almost anything can happen. A liner back to the pitcher. A dribbler to short. A monster 400 foot homerun. A weak foul ball to the third base side. A bean ball placed in the third rib of the batter. Each at bat is a paragraph. Each pitch is a sentence.

There are so many games each season that odd outliers start to crop up. Teams will score 20 runs in a game. Players will hit 4 home runs in a game. Guys will go on 30 game hitting streaks. Relief pitchers will hit three run homers in their first major league at bat. Second basemen will pull off unassisted triple plays. And yes, at some point you will have a pitcher throw a no-hitter while high on LSD.



Baseball is exciting because the possibilities are endless and ever new season is a blank canvas just waiting for something strange to happen. So get the lawn mowed, pop open a beer, and let's play ball.

Go Cardinals!

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