Its that time of year again, my friends, that time of year when the sky is usually blue enough that it hurts your eyes to look at, the time of the year when the titans of the game take off the training wheels and let ‘er rip. Finally, its opening day. Finally.

This year, its been tough to get excited with Mauer on the shelf for up to a month, and the Twins hurting in general, but everything always seems to work itself out. In fact, Mauer is far from the biggest name on the DL, as Rodriguez is out for a few weeks and Hamels is also out for a few weeks. Everyone is still recouperating from the WBC, and the fans are putting on their winter jackets to sit through the early games in the cold weather cities. Its still a wonderful time of the year.

To me, Football is obviously the bigger sport, and much more of delicacy considering the lack of games, but that doesn’t take all the excitement out of the boys of summer. I will say this, I did not re-purchase the baseball package this year, and I think that is a pretty good idea. You get to that middle part of the season where teams are on autopilot and you just get bored. At least I did last year. It becomes another job to get home and watch the games you paid for.

As for the hobby, I havent bought a box of baseball cards for myself in a long time, and Prime Cuts was really the only set I saw that was worth my time. I bought a box of threads with money I had won or gotten as a gift, so it really wasn’t the same as risking my shit for a box of cards that wasn’t going to produce. Baseball has become even more of a first world collector’s sport because there just isnt anything worth spending 200 bucks on for a box these days. Triple Threads is a disgusting excuse for a product, and Topps Sterling is even worse. I cant justify spending 200 bucks on a five hit box, let alone 250 on a 1 hit box or a 1 auto box, when the majority of the autos are worth less than 10 bucks on ebay.

Baseball should have a good season this year, though, as most of us are looking for another team to recreate the Tampa Bay miracle. Last year showed that payroll means nothing, and Baseball needed that. It didn’t stop the Spankees from spending a small country on Captain Cheeseburger and Mark Texiera, and if you were looking at how much was being thrown around, you would wonder what the hell people were talking about when they mentioned the bad economy.

Either way, today should have been a holiday, and it should be your top priority to get out to a park this week to enjoy the nice or shitty weather for playing Baseball. Im going to try to make an Angels game, but work sucks about that, so it may not be possible.

So, umm, PLAY BALL!