33 Reasons to be Excited for the 2012 Season

These guys are excited. Are you?

The long wait is nearly over.  Pitchers and catchers report in less than a week, marking the beginning of the baseball new year.  Here are 33 reasons why we here at Crum-Bum Beat are excited about the 2012 season.

33 Things Learned or Verified in 2011

1. Pre-season predictions are fun and impossible to resist but complete bollacks

2. The St. Louis Cardinals are a scourge to the NL Central and the rest of MLB.  Once again they won the World Series with the worst record among postseason qualifiers (see also 2006).

3. The St. Louis Cardinals helped provide one of most exciting Octobers of recent memory, not to mention the stretch September run

4. Tony LaRussa carries magic beans in his pocket instead of sunflower seeds

5. Ron Washington is a fine motivational manager but a dim tactical manager.  If he only trusted his gut half the time, the Rangers would have won 100 games and likely the World Series

Somewhere, Buck O'Neil is Smiling

   In our beautiful memory

   We were all handsome

   We all could sing

   We all had the heart 

   Of the prettiest girl in town

   And we all hit .300  -Buck O'Neil

Hold on to your butts. It's the Fall Classic.

Texas Rangers (96-66) vs. St. Louis Cardinals (90-72)
AL West Champs            NL Wild Card Winner
def. DET 4-2 ALCS         def. MIL 4-2 NLCS
def. TB 3-1 ALDS          def. PHI 3-2 NLDS

Six glorious months of summer, an interesting first half of October and we have our Fall Classic.  As is customary, we get a matchup few predicted, including myself (my preseason World Series was Angels vs. Rockies).  Don't worry about me; I stay away from the pony races.  I didn't pick either of these teams to make the playoffs, let alone be the last two standing.  I should reiterate what has been stated in previous posts: I am a Cubs fan, and I do not like the Cardinals.  In fact, I loathe them.  I respect the hell out of the organization, am envious of their accomplishments, but I hope they fail in winning their 11th World Championship.  I am still annoyed by 2006, when they limped into the playoffs, made a mockery of the short series format and became the worst team in  history to win the title.  As much as I would love to see a highly competitive, back-and-forth World Series requiring the maximum seven games for the first time since 2002, I would much prefer the Rangers to sweep in dominating fashion.  That aside, there is much to be excited about in this series.  And much to dread.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em: ALDS Recap

Tastes like victory

During the Division Series, I found myself intrigued by the AL match-ups more so than the ones in the NL.  This is different than my normal NL-centric leanings, and probably had a lot to do with the fact that I despise both the Cardinals and Phillies, and (wrongly) didn't give the Diamondbacks much of a chance against the Brewers. The junior circuit kicks off their Championship Series tonight in Texas with the two most colorful managers left in the postseason facing off in a battle for the pennant.  Before that happens, lets take a look back at what went down in the Division Series.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Brewers: NLDS Recap

Important things from the 2011 NLDS

The NLDS wrapped up yesterday with two very exciting one-run elimination games.  Much like no one thought the Diamondbacks had a chance to win their division, no one thought they would give the Brewers much of a fight in the first round of the playoffs.  When the Brewers won the first two games of the series, outscoring Arizona 13-5, with Ryan Braun continuing to rake like he had in the regular season, I wrote this series off as just another Division round rout.  Things changed however when the series moved to the desert, as the Diamondbacks won Games 3 and 4, outscoring the Brewers 18-7.  With a grand slam in each game and an excellent pitching performance from the hatchet-throwing rookie Josh Collmenter in Game 4 (7 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 6 K), the Diamondbacks continued to surprise everyone.   

“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.”

Games 162 of the 2011 season defied any and all possible combination of words to quantify.  One wishes John Updike were still alive with an itch in his knickers and could somehow have warmed a seat in each of the three stadiums that hosted the severance between summer and fall.  The seasons changed, dramatically and with devastating abruptness for fans of the Red Sox and Braves.  The collapse was a long way down, failure wrapping its callused fingers with slow, tight assurance.  Yet the end came as a shock to fans, though one could feel it coming.  The aftermath of each team’s respective collapse is being dealt with differently.  Braves fans, as is their general nature, are far more somber and calculating.  They point to key injuries to the starting rotation (top two starters), an over reliance on three young bullpen arms, and disappointing seasons from several key offensive cogs (Heyward, Prado, Chipper).  There are some in search of a scapegoat: a passive manager, all of a sudden inclined toward risky, LaRussa-like behavior in the season’s final game.  But for the most part, they are stomaching the ultimate failure of a team with high expectations but without the necessary components to fend off the superior St. Louis Cardinals.

Spring Hopes Eternal

     Bill Veeck was right.  There are only two seasons: Baseball and Winter. Winter is a season of waiting.  Waiting for the sun to crack through clouds clotting the grey sky.  Waiting for a gust of bitter wind to pass before upturning one’s collar and shuffling through the congested, dingy streets, thumbing a path to the places one chooses to go.  Waiting for the check counters to finish tallying their figures and peeling their c-notes.  Waiting for the fruits of such taxing and all-too-encompassing labor to manifest themselves on the field of play, where the men in uniform can help us forget all about the nickels and dimes of baseball.  A time of waiting for the village green to reassert itself, in all its timelessness and beauty and utter defiance, in the face of urban sprawl.  Each year the sky gets a bit darker, the air thicker.  And each year the diamond-cut grass gets a bit greener, the only manicured lawn we need.  And boy do we need it.

     Winter is a season for those damning human maladies of hindsight and futurethink, of examining the too recently passed in aide of projecting the long-term future.  The game of baseball, as it is played, is an accumulation of isolated moments of abrupt and calculated movement, moments that add up to outs, scoreless innings, rallies, crooked numbers, to greatness and to failure.  During the winter these moments tend to escape us.  We as fans, as writers, as analysts, pundits or however we label ourselves extend our reach to the bigger pictures.  And then we find ourselves attaching monetary gain to said pictures.  During the winter months, we also become businessmen.

     There is a reason baseball has been the subject of the vast majority of books written on sports, and it is not simply because it has been around the longest.  Baseball allows for a narrative thread.  In fact, it creates and maintains one of such assurance and of such unpredictability.  We gestate throughout the winter months, assessing past performances and predicting future ones.  We pick favorites, analyze transactions.  We predict the World Series.  Why?  Because it is fun.  And because we know, unless gifted the bit of luck inherently necessary to succeed in baseball, that we will be wrong.  It is as much fun to be wrong as it is right when observing baseball.  One cannot write the outcome of a baseball season, just as a good writer cannot arrive at the conclusion of his/her story without taking the ride first.  All one can do is trust the integrity of what exists, have confidence in the players, and let the rest work itself out.  It’s a beautiful thing, to start with something you know to be good and feel the rush of it work its way to greatness.