The Daily Grind
I started this a couple of weeks ago but have been so busy at work hadn't had the time to wrap it up. My job has been a daily grind since January, minimum ten hour days, often 11 or 12, half day Saturdays and never a slow workday for two months. I'm not complaining, it's nice on payday, sucks the other six.
I'm so happy baseball is back. I miss the routine, games every day, never a league day off, I can count on baseball to be there for me when I need it between April and October. Now that I live in Arizona, March is covered too. If I have time to watch, baseball is there. If I'm too busy baseball goes on without me. I'll try to catch the highlights.
When non-baseball people joke about the never ending baseball season, 162 games, their feeling that so few summer games seem important ... I realize they just don't understand and proceed with a degree of pity for them. When haters moan about the pace of the game. claiming it's too slow and games are too long, I realize these are clock people and will never grasp the pastoral nature of the game I love. Baseball is our national pastime, not our national combat. That's the domain of the NFL.
George Carlin had a great comedy bit about baseball versus football. I needn't recount it. It's that famous. I don't believe the games should ever be compared. They're from difference universes appealing to different parts of our brain. Baseball stimulates my brain far more than football, always has. This is not a knock on football. I'm a big fan. Baseball is just #1 in my heart.
I love the 162 games played over roughly 180 days. Think about that. How many people only have three weeks off in six months? Those idle days are scattered, one per week, often away from home. Ball players have been doing the daily grind every day for well over a century, every spring, summer and fall since the 1880s.
Football started in mud lots in the 1920's with square headed men knocking the snot out of one another once day per week. They still do it that way, one game a week. Pigskin people see Sunday as an event, a holiday every week, packed with games all over the nation. Baseball has that EVERY DAY. What part of that are they missing when they prattle about how long the season is?
I know baseball will be here tomorrow as I'm watching MLB Network's coverage of today's highlights. I know there will be baseball this weekend, next week, next month and every day in between. When it's rained out in one city they're playing ball in another.
Last week the Oakland A's were rained out for the first time since 1998 ... or something like that. Imagine 15 seasons of baseball without a rain out. I call that heaven ... and the A's are winning these days. Baseball Nirvana for their fans.