| Blurnsball

As a young kid I was rather indifferent to Baseball at first. Even when I started playing little league, I was not into it, but within a few short years I started disliking the sport because I was made to play. The turning point was the day at practice I got clocked in the face by a line drive hit, while on the mound... Big nasty bloody nose. Obviously I wasn't completely coherent after that and a few pitches later the catcher threw the ball back to me while on the mound and I just straight-up missed the ball. It hit me in the face... Again... Big fat black eye. I think I was done after that. I played for a few more years, but I could never shake the instinctive flinch. Thus, I sucked at baseball and that really didn't help my self esteem at the time.

Now, the lady friend really likes going to the games. Slowly over the past 10 years she has led me to revisit my baseball prejudices and to my surprise, I went first from "meh", to "hey this isn't bad", to "Awesome lets go see a game!" So now we get out to 10-15 games a year and I will actually watch games on TV from time to time. Last year Aimey and I even got to attend a World Series game and were also in attendance for Matt Cain's perfect game mid season. This was very exciting shit.

Certainly, for someone like myself who likes stats, there is interest with that aspect in the back of my mind, but I just don't see myself as a stats hound like some of the people who follow baseball. Honestly I have come to enjoy the pacing of the game. Something soothing and summer-like about the whole affair. And your comment about PEDs "ruining" the game, I think you are spot-on. Baseball has two pillars of sanctity, tradition and stats. This is why rules are so uncommonly changed and why so many ridiculous, unwritten players rules exist. People don't want the sport rituals to change and they damn sure don't want their stats undermined by introducing inconsistencies to the decades of continuity. Maybe it is all nostalgic, get off my lawn shit or maybe it's just a bunch of closeted, numbers nerds disguised as jocks trolling everyone. Either way, it is certainly is a strong undercurrent.

Now don't get me wrong, I still really like Hockey. It is by far my favorite sport, but the games are hard to get to in SJ and honestly I don't like the Sharks. Plus, the only Kings games available on TV here are the few nationally televised games a year. Sadly, last year I had to pass on SJ vs. LA playoff tickets. Our contractor offered them to me an hour before the game was to start. I was bummed, I just had no way to get there in time or even before the second period was over. In retrospect it wasn't too bad. The Kings got blown out in that game.

D>M>