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As Opening Day 2009 fast approaches — a little faster than I’d like considering what I’m trying to accomplish here, though I’m more than fine with it otherwise — I thought I’d take a more expansive look at the upcoming Major League Baseball season. For those who don’t care to read my exhaustive rambling, I produced an easy-to-digest version of this all-you-can-eat buffet of baseball-related banality right here.
With that out of the way, let’s not even pretend that I don’t contribute, however little, to the dreaded East Coast Bias.
Yep, it’s AL East time. Teams appear in order of last year’s finish.
The defending American League Champion Rays stunned just about everyone who follows baseball last year (with the possible exception of my friend Brian, who claims that in his sleep-deprived haze during last year’s A’s-Red Sox opener in Japan he had the foresight to tell me that the Rays would win the American League. I was too busy cursing Daisuke Matsuzaka’s constant nibbling and J.D. Drew’s wonky back to notice or care) when they made the leap from perennial punching bag/disgrace to a fairly great team that merely plays in an unspeakably disgraceful venue.
Whereas the question a year ago at this time in the eyes of the people who had given the Rays any respect was if they’d finally manage to win at least 82 games, the question today is can the Rays repeat as champions of the AL East and the American League? The best answer is, they can, but they’re going to need to catch quite a few breaks.
As mentioned here, I recently ventured out to Yankee Stadium, Red Sox cap in tow, for a pair of games involving the 26-Time World Champion New York Yankees and the…shit, let’s go with Two-Time World Champion Toronto Blue Jays (the Toronto fanbase isn’t quite as forthcoming with this statistic, but I’m pretty sure their back-to-back wins in ‘92 and ‘93 were the franchise’s only titles).
I was originally supposed to only attend Tuesday’s game, as I rushed to my computer and bought a ticket for the game on Friday when it was announced that the Yankees were going to fuck their own world up by transferring relief ace Joba Chamberlain to the starting rotation. They had originally planned to have him make this transition in spring training, but then decided, nah, we’ll leave him in the bullpen. About a month later, though, they realized their starters suck, and concluded that they’d made a huge mistake by leaving Joba in the pen. But there was a solution! They could progressively build up his endurance by facing Major League hitters in high-stress, late game situations! Surely, this plan could not fail.
If it does, I’ll make an attempt to transcribe the profound lyrics on one of these babies, assuming, of course, that I’m one of the first 18,000 people into the stadium.
With that said, me and my Sox cap are off to the world’s most toilet-shaped arena to wish harm upon Joba Chamberlain.
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