It’s that time of year!

I love baseball- not the same way that I did as a child, but in a pretty deep way. The sport is like a nice little thread between my grandfather, father, and nephews. Each one of us grew up playing the game and still enjoy watching it.  So every year as February finally lets go of its icy grip upon us and March plays the role of dick-teasing a little bit of spring here and there I get excited because I know baseball season is upon us.

Usually the beginning of a sports season means that I’ll find myself on the couch cheering on the teams that I follow; whether it be the Carolina Hurricanes of the NHL and the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Carolina Panthers.  But the problem has been for so long with baseball that I don’t really have a team to follow.

Sure, I came of age in the ‘90s when the Atlanta Braves were scary dominant, but they never did anything for me. They were a team that broke your heart every year, and not in a way that was mildly entertaining like the Boston Red Sox.  The Red Sox at least made it close, only to screw it up in the end. The Braves would make it to the World Series and then promptly lose in four games.  So the Braves were out.

A few years ago, I read Moneyball by Michael Lewis and fell in love with the way Billy Beane ran the Oakland A’s utilizing sabermetrics to build a team using stats that produced offense and yet didn’t have the sex appeal that home runs did. When I found out that the guru of sabermetrics, Bill James, was working for the Sox I paid attention to the team and even followed that team for two years- one of them being the team’s World Series win.  Then the Sox became obnoxious.

Don’t get me wrong, the team’s scrappy play was still endearing, but all of those fucking obnoxious fans were annoying.  Soon I started going to bars and seeing dumb blonde girls wearing Sox hats.  I tend to ignore a lot of the dumb bimbos who watch the NFL because their boyfriends make them and claim to be fans but for some reason in MLB it’s obnoxious.  So with the Sox out, I was without a team again.

I started digging the Brewers a few years ago. I really liked their pitching staff and Prince Fielder’s home run power. Once the team added C.C. Sabathia, they were electrifying. I watched as many games as I could.  They even made the playoffs that year. But a funny thing happened from that moment on: I noticed the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Phillies ran over the Brewers en route to the World Series that year, and I loved watching them. They had great pitching in the form of Cole Hamels, great hitting from Ryan Howard, and Chase Utley, a player whom I loved. He is an old fashioned ball player who played hard and was a throwback to the old school players of yore. I was hooked on this team.

They ran into the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series. Part of me was pulling for the Rays simply because they were a losing team for their entire existence. Part of me was rooting for them because the father of a few close friends of mine had died that year and he was a huge Tampa sports fan. Either way, it was a good series with the Phillies winning in five games.

Last year, I tried to remain true to the Brewers, but I couldn’t help it: I liked the Phillies. I’d come to know and respect their talents far more than I ever did the Brewers’ skills, and now I was checking their games out when I could.  I was a Phillies fan.  This is a problem for a few reasons.

The first being that I hate most of the teams that exist along I-95 (for those not knowledge able about our nation’s roads, I am referring to any team that begins with the Washington Nationals and ends with the Boston Red Sox).  I don’t reserve this hatred for baseball only, but in this context baseball is all that matters. I don’t like New York teams or New York North (Boston) or New York South (Philadelphia).  It’s a rule. I live my life by certain rules and they keep me happy. This is a big one. I can’t like a team from Philadelphia.  That’s a good rule, but I also can’t not like the Phillies. This makes me a very conflicted guy.

Besides being conflicted, I am (as a Republican put it during an online argument) “an elitist piece of shit”. This means that I can’t like a team that is doing well. I have to find a team that is down on its luck and stick with them. I have to suffer for my baseball, don’t I?

The bullshit indie rocker music fan in me says yes.  This is my problem: part of whatever it is that makes me me has convinced myself that if a lot of people like it and if there is a huge amount of success involved (and I haven’t been there from the relative beginning) then I shouldn’t like it. I’m sure this is a pretty cool and valid feeling in music or art or film, but does this matter in sports? Does me putting on a Phillies hat matter at the end of the day? I’m not sure. I hope it doesn’t.  So I guess I’m a Phillies fan.

“So what does being a Phillies fan have to do with us” you ask me. Well, I’m not sure. You, the reader came to the blog by your own choice, so I suppose nothing.  But then again, there are nice Chase Utley jerseys for about $40 at this website, and they are in my size. I also happen to have a nice Paypal account that someone could donate to.

Just saying (hey, I gotta internet whore at some point, right?)

Man, I feel dirty for doing that.

Until later,

Be good.