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.

All-time Pitching Rotations -- Vol. I

Dominant...as advertised.

I will be embarking on a leisurely exploration of the greatest pitching rotations in baseball history, operating from memory and stories told and bold claims made.  This will not be a perfect, or even comprehensive study, as I don't have the patience or knowledge or time to delve into the multitude of pitching statistics at my disposal.  Nor do I understand all of them yet.  And while baseball is a passion, it is not my only one, nor am I fortunate enough to make a living delving into all of baseball's intracacies.  Plus, the lady in my life, while tolerant of my baseball obsession, can only excuse my incessant baseball meanderings to a certain point.  And keeping her happy takes precedence over any baseball analysis I intend to indulge.  So excuse the holes that surely exist in my findings, and feel free to fill them as you see fit.  This is, after all, just for fun.  So let's us get on with, do it please ya.

This is a Picture of Pete Rose

Notice how much hairier his right arm is.

Rickey-isms

Rickey Henderson was a hell of a ballplayer, a once in a lifetime talent that demanded your undivided attention any time he was on the field.  Bill James was quoted as saying, "If you could split him [Henderson] in two, you'd have two Hall of Famers," and his career 114 WAR comes close to backing up that claim.  During his peak, he stole bases at a dizzying pace, three times notching triple digit steals in a single season.  The game today is certainly different than it was twenty years ago, but consider that this year's stolen base leader was Michael Bourn with 61 steals, Rickey bested that number ten times in his career (with one of those times occurring in his age 39 season!).  It is a pretty safe bet to consider Rickey's career stolen base total of 1,406 an unbreakable record, right up there with Cal's consecutive games, Cy's career wins and DiMaggio's streak.  Granted, the effectiveness of stolen bases as sound baseball strategy has been diminished a bit by the sabermetric movement, but Rickey was not a one-trick pony; he could hit for power (297 career home runs), get on base (.401 career OBP), and field his position as well. 

It wasn't just his on-field talents that made Rickey one of the most memorable players in baseball history, though.  Rickey knew that part of his job was to be an entertainer.  He would pimp home runs, snatch fly balls out of the air with a flick of his glove, and provide reporters and fans endless fodder with stories of Rickey being Rickey.  It was said that before every game he would stand naked in front of a full length mirror and say to himself "Rickey's the best," for several minutes, he would take a stretch limo to games where the ballpark was less than a mile away from the team hotel, he would check into hotels under assumed names to avoid the press, he frequently forgot the names of his coaches, managers, and GM's, he once had to miss three games in August due to frostbite after falling asleep on an ice pack, he played two seasons of Independent League ball after no major league teams would sign him, and the tales go on and on. 

Rickey was also one of baseball's greatest wordsmiths, on par with Casey Stengel and Yogi Berra.  So, follow me after the jump for some of Rickey's most quotable quotations. 

Of the Times...

Oriole Park at Camden Yards by Max Mason

The scene is instant, whole and wonderful.  In its beauty and design that vision of the soaring stands, the pattern of forty thousand empetalled faces, the velvet and unalterable geometry of the playing field, and the small lean figures of the players, set there, lonely, tense and waiting in their places, bright, desperate solitary atoms encircled by that huge wall of nameless faces, is incredible.  And more than anything it is the light, the miracle of light and shade and color--the crisp blue light that swiftly slants out from the soaring stands and, deepening to violet, begins to march across the velvet field and towards the pitcher's box, that gives the thing its single and incomparable beauty.
     The batter stands swinging his bat and grimly waiting at the plate, crouched, tense, the catcher, crouched, the umpire, bent, hands clasped behind his back, and peering forward.  All of them are set now in the cold blue of that slanting shadow, except the pitcher who stands out there all alone, calm, desperate, and forsaken in his isolation, with the gold-red swiftly fading light upon him, his figure legible with all the resolution, despair and lonely dignity which that slanting, somehow fatal light can give him.
                                                                                           --Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River

It has been said that baseball is who we were, and football is who we've become.  But who has ever written about football as beautifully as Thomas Wolfe does above?  Baseball will undoubtedly live longer.  At the very least on the green fields in our minds.  

Line-Up for Tomorrow

It's still winter, though we are almost there.  To pass the time, I say let's read some poetry.  Why the hell not?  Come along, if it please ya...

Found!: the Dutch Stache

In our continuing coverage of Derek Holland's mustache; it appears to have been stolen by actor Michael Cera.  This is certainly a big story, and rest assured, we here at Crum-Bum beat have our best guys on it.  More on this as it develops.