After a winter of discontent — signs brazenly stolen; titles shadily retained; postseasons potentially diluted; owners who never quite sell — baseball’s redeeming feature comes to the fore today: baseball, or something very much like it.
A reasonable facsimile of the 2020 Mets will take a field or two in Florida. One group of them will be broadcast to their incurable followers in New York and wherever Mets fans hook up intravenously to screens and speakers. A split squad of Mets versus a random school of Fish, live from Yet Another Sponsor Stadium in Port St. Lucie, 1:05 PM LGMT.
Rick Porcello will throw, followed by others. Our pitchers will be clad in Mets uniforms. Many of them will look familiar. Same for our hitters and fielders. By afternoon’s end, the numbers on their backs will soar and their names will be as fleeting as our attention, but their mission will have been accomplished. Mets-ish baseball will remind us why we return to this annually and distract us for a spell from the aspects of it we consider chronically mishandled.
That’s plenty for day one’s one-day moratorium (or Melvin Moratorium) on whatever ails our great game and adversely affects our favorite franchise. The Mets already look pretty good on paper. They’ll look even better on TV and sound terrific on radio.
Flight 2020 is more than a month from its scheduled departure time, yet we are ready to begin preboarding.
LFGM!
Yep, it’s time for a guy wearing #89 to get up there against a pitcher wearing #76, while guys get their outfield sprints in, and those who can use vacation time now are posting selfies from the Tiki bar in the LF corner. My wife has already rolled her eyes a little in response to my reminder that today’s errands need to be planned around a 1pm start time, but she’s certainly known me long enough to know where I’ll be planted this afternoon. Play ball, bang no garbage cans, LFGM.
I know its Spring Training, i know in a week I’ll be bored of #75 v #84 et al, but….BASEBALL IS BACK! And I LOVE it
Loved a few years ago when u posted a 1970ish sports notes/ article from that years spring training
That was a fun one.
“Willie Montanez modeled a sharp new suit in the clubhouse.”
Wow, that was excellent!
Agreed, used to salivate over every morsel of Spring Training when nothing was available. Now with info overkill, it gets old real fast.