"How often do you see that?"

Peoples that knows me knows I gots my favorites. For everything. Rob Fleming from High Fidelity type stuff. I love hockey. It is my favorite sport. I live and die with it and have more emotional attachment to it than I do with any other. Right now I am so deep in it with the playoffs that I want to rant and rave about all sorts of things. My friends and their text message receiving machines know this all too well.

But I cannot, nay will not do that here.

I must say that it is because of this emotional roller coaster that I am glad baseball has started up again. Baseball is sooo much more fun to write about. If I were to continue to speak about hockey right now, I feel as though my biases would cloud my judgment, and I could possibly say something based on said bias. There is the chance that something will happen in the Stanley Cup Playoffs that simply must be written about, but until then, hello opening day!

To me, baseball is the most excitingly unique in terms of game construction and composition. I am not entirely sure how to start a top five list for that, so take of it what you will. Think about it though, of the four major North American sports, it is the only one that is not all about getting the object across the line or in to the goal. There are a thousand other things that the purists go on about, (lack of a clock, different ideas like The Zen of Baseball) but that one difference is so important because it creates a bigger snowflake effect with the games. There is less and less chance of two games being alike than say, a pair played by the Minnesota Wild*. As I mentioned a while back, the possibilities of different, new creation and overall randomness and probability of events is honestly invigorating to me.

For instance, all last year I was way in to the walk-off home run. It has got to be the greatest feeling in baseball, save a perfect game or a no-no from a pitcher. Its symbolism is gorgeous with the hero's family waiting at home for him, his return often punctuated with a tossing of his hat to accentuate the Ozzie and Harrietness of the whole thing. Also, it can only happen in a home ballpark, so the crowd is by definition a part of what makes the Good Night Irene's appearance all the more special. It is the genuine, sheer bliss kind of roar, unlike that of what the good people of Montreal did to Carey Price in what is surely his last game as a Hab**. Yeah, I was thinking that the walk-off was pretty great, but then Opening day 2009 arrived.

I like it when a certain stat reveals just how rare an occurrence in team sport is. Take the April 6th game between the Washington Nationals and the Florida Marlins, probably a game that most of you reading right now could honestly care less about. Something happened in that game that had not happened in 41 years. Check it out, in all its safe-to-distribute-to-the-public-in-the-eyes-of-the-MLB glory, set to the soothing sounds of Benny Hill here. A better example is Granderson from last season that for some reason has not been shut down yet. It is obviously a better version, because it remains in its original broadcast form, and you get the idea of how rare this event is as you hear the crowd react. Particularly when they can tell that he is going to keep rounding third.
This is one of those things in baseball that again, no one really expects to occur after a pitch. To put some perspective on it, Ichiro got one in the 2007 All-Star Game. That was the first time that happened in the history of the game, and baseball is older than dirt. Unlike the no-hitter which is slightly more rare, it is something that only takes 10 seconds to occur. It is also one ball player creating and doing something that makes the uninformed ask, "Why don't they always do that?" You know what I mean, it is the same kind of uninformed that are so blinded by Alex Burrows' great, clutch play that they ignore his more Sean Avery-like tendencies that also make up the kind of player he truly is***. In seeing an inside-the-park round tripper, everyone in attendance has witnessed the hitter just plain take over and put up a run (or runs) the old fashion way, and it will more than likely be the last time they see it for a while. Watch the same Granderson homer through a fan's camera off in nowhereland here and you will see just how fortunate they know they are to have witnessed it.

So the 2009 season is all about the inside job for me. I will keep my eyes out for whatever I can find, and if any of you should happen to see something, please feel free to send it to me. Not just the majors either. Who knows, maybe we can get together and exchange our top 5.

If we're lucky.


*- I can use this example because they have been out for a while now.
**- Uh, didja see the game?
***- OK, probably unnecessary; however, he did pull an opponent's hair in a recent fight like a woman, you guys. Like a goddamn woman.