As If It Mattered

That sound you hear is the quiet sigh of sports fans who had been holding their breath until real competition begins anew. Even those who may once have held a passing fancy for the fancy passes of the National Basketball Association or the orchestrated, icebound Multiple Martial Arts of the National Hockey League have drifted away from their mild infatuations. When your season is truncated by more than half, the remaining schedule carries the much-hated and oft-discussed asterisk. Basketball is, for the most part, back on its feet, but the ill will generated by arbitration between millionaires left a sour taste that lingers. Hockey? Do I have to explain?
That's why baseball is such a godsend at this time. Sure, there are still some people in Baltimore sleeping off their post-Super Bowl celebration, but the rest of us are anxious to turn the page. What better way to do just that than to peek in on Spring Training? Before the one hundred and sixty-two game regular season gets underway there's a whole lot of practice games that we can all talk about, speculate on, and ponder before the real deal gets underway. That's why it's tough to be Josh Hamilton, who left his old team, the Texas Rangers, for a great big check from the Los Angeles Anaheim Orange County Southern California Angels. In his first game with those Angels, he went a big zero for three. There's still a whole lot of baseball left in Mister Hamilton, and this season stretches out before us as even Chicago Cubs fans can consider the possibilities. But oh-for-three is a tough place to start out. Baseball is a game of averages, and it's likely that the ship called Josh will right itself before it's all over, but for now, we'll all simply pounce on it and point at it as if it were the truth. For the next six months.