My Baseball Year

Beware, this blog entry may contain some serious spazzing out due to serious angst. Please be aware that most of it was written whilst under the influence of heavy sedatives due to various sports injuries and any responsibility for the content of this article is down to the pixies in my head.

I know it’s a little early to be writing some kind of memorandum on the year but I have been really slack on my entries of late so I feel like I owe some kind of explanation to the one or two people who still read this blog.

Its been a funny time. My first year playing in Richmond has been a real mixed bag with steady glove work (at least I think so) except for one foray at short on one of the many days when the side has been let down by guys not showing up. Its generally been a nightmare at the plate and I’m sure going into the season having mysteriously lost a stone didn’t help.

Thank God I’m still running the bases well and my Ty Cobb homerun (a single and then three steals) against Bournemouth was probably the highlight of my year but a gruelling schedule has taken its toll. All our home games were in the first half of the season and all our road games were in the second with only nine or ten players and me carrying my usual plethora of injuries (right knee won‘t bend, right ankle is the size of a softball, the left knee is always sore, the left shoulder has just died). All in all my usual enthusiastic psyche has taken a hit and I barely said a word to the oppositions third base coach last weekend (believe me, that’s a rarity as I talk to everyone down there).

I suppose I should have seen this coming. Life as a baseball fan in Britain has really gone downhill for me since the heady days of a few years back. In fact its never been the same since ‘The Ghetto’ closed (MSN’s baseball chat room). Back then there were endless barnies and general irreverence to be had with baseball fans of all nationalities and ages. Things could get irrational, violent and sometimes just silly and from time to time it would be truly enlightening and fascinating like the time someone came up with the truly original answer to the question of the second best first baseman of all time as Stan Musial).

Thanks to changes of job and a life of odd hours and general running around, I’ve managed to lose track of the Hatr’s (AKA Soxy) and Metzy’s of this world but at least I had the Five forums and, subsequently, the Baseballfan site. Alas, the more and more people have gotten involved in that, the more the opportunity for the masses to brainwash the few. Now the forums are full of likeminded people who agree on everything and the only time an argument or loosely based debate, is allowed to take place is when the Yankee and BoSox fans take over and do the whole ‘my team is better than yours’ type frivolities. At least the Five forums.

I used to love the endless debates and rhetoric of baseball banter but we are descending into a world of white noise furore about nothing.

Even the fantasy leagues are becoming a chore including the league that I’m the commish of. I tried to do something a tad different and it all ended up with people bitching about how it wasn’t the same old thing (I’m paraphrasing of course). I set up this site and called it ‘Spurious Baseball’ which tells you all you need to know about my feelings on toeing the line and maintaining status quo.

Scott Podsednik should have been AL MVP last year but no one would seriously contend my point of view because it was so obvious it should have been A-Rod or Ortiz because that’s what everyone else said it should be…oh and it also lands ourselves back into the comfy world of BoSox and Yankees which of course is what’s really important.

So I write this as a bit of a fed up baseball fan (I still consider myself a baseball nut) but I’m forced to ask why I bother nowadays? I’ve been involved in practically every attempt anyone’s ever had to start a British baseball fanzine and have willingly put up with the megalomaniacs who start them up. I always wrote things I believed in and I always conceded that I wasn’t always rational and certainly wasn’t always right and whenever possible I tried to be contentious, not take things for granted and try to have fun with it (I am most proud of my piece about Rick Ankiel for Strike UK, even if the guy whose site it was wrote a condescending and unnecessary intro to it).

So what is there in this environment for me? I’m the sort of person who will wear a black hat if everyone else is wearing white and I’m dismissed because I try to do things differently and no one seems willing to fight as a true fan of the game rather than just a fan of team.

We exist in a world that wants to know it’s right rather than looking away from black and white and seeing the multi-tonal grey area in between where it has nothing to do with right and wrong. Perception and interpretation are wonderful things to mess around with and if no one wants to challenge what most people take for granted then irrational nutcases like myself can’t help to find new truths or determine that the old ones were right all along. At least all angles would be covered and we might have some fun along the way and above all else this is supposed to be fun. That’s why they call it a game. Can’t we play again? It could be fun. It could be interesting. It could be grey. It could be just about anything.