The World Series Ain't In April
Schilling’s ankle hasn’t imploded… Beckett looks like the real deal… Papelbon is throwing like Rivera… Lowell is having a Giambi-like resurgence… and the Yankees’ pitching is struggling.
Clement looks like the guy who ended last season rather than the guy who began last season… Coco Crisp “can’t stay healthy”… David Wells pitched so bad he must be sober… Wakefield’s knuckler isn’t knuckling—and no one can catch it anyway… and the Yankees hitters are on pace to score enough runs to match their payroll.
This is early-season baseball.
Of course, the baseball writers have one in the bag for this, one of the many trite sayings they uncork on us, the lowly baseball public, over the course of the season:
You can’t win a division in April, but you can lose one.
This is one of their tactics to get us to keep watching—not that most of us wouldn’t anyway. This is why the opinions of the mainstream media are worth as much as that Nomar rookie card you’ve been hanging on to. You would think guys who have been around the sport as long as guys like Olney and Gammons have would know better. If anything this just makes us nervous, and drives the powerful engine that is sports talk radio.
You can’t win or lose a division in April. April is as meaningful as spring training.
There’s a reason they play 162 games. Think about that number for a minute. From Opening Day until the last out of the regular season on October 1st, baseball players will go to “work” on more days than you will. Position players will field more ground balls than you’ll send emails. They’ll have twice as many at bats as you’ll take dumps (unless you have a thing for Taco Bell). Starting Pitchers will throw more pitches in a week than you’ll drink beers in a month (unless you’re me). Teams will travel more miles than you’ll probably walk in feet.
Judging the outcome of games in April is like judging Tom Cruise’s mental stability right after Top Gun.
In other words, the first month of the season means jack shit. Of course, when we see the early stories unfold, like Wells getting pounded or Tanyon Sturtze throwing tater tots, it makes us crazier than time-traveler Darren Daulton. But those of us who have actually watched baseball all our lives shake it off after about five seconds, because we know you can put as much stock in Papelbon’s April saves as you can in Dalton’s claim that he’s “crossed over” through other dimensions.
That’s not saying that Papelbon won’t have a banner year and dominate. In the same way how bad you perform early has nothing to do with how good you’ll perform late, the reverse is true. He’s got the stuff, and he’s got the mentality down. He’s an icy son of a bitch, and I don’t want the Yanks to face him. But if he can hold up in October on the Big Stage, only time will tell. (In the interest in circumventing any angry emails from Yanks fans, my comparison to Rivera in the intro was meant to be a humorous exaggeration.)
Has everyone forgotten last year? Let’s see, the Yanks had their worst April ever. The Orioles were the best team in baseball for that month. Brian Roberts—BRIAN ROBERTS, at the time a career .264 hitter—was the early season MVP candidate. Matt Clement started off 6-0. The Big Unit’s first 10 starts went about as well as Jeff Weaver’s career in the Big Apple.
And where did things end up in the standings at the end of the season? The same damn place they had the previous seven. Despite all of that early season crapola.
This week, I had a confrontation with a Sox fan—who shall remain nameless because I won’t justify her comments by publishing her name (and because I’m still friends with her)—who said she’s positive the Sox are the better team than the Yankees this year, and that she’s positive they’ll win the division this year. This was a statement, not a prediction. Anyone can make predictions, I do it all the time. But this was a statement, based purely on the first week of the season.
These are the types of fans that drive me nuts. Unfortunately, Boston is as rife with them now as New York was in the late 90s. People who love their team but don’t know anything about baseball.
This sort of “Blind Optimism” is what separates fans of teams from fans of the sport. It’s one thing to want your team to win. It’s another to KNOW they will. BO—as I will call it from here on out because it is just as disgusting—is one thing and one thing only: stupid.
Look. I hope the Yankees will win the division. I hope they’ll win the World Series. If you want me to make a prediction, I think they will win the division (but not the Series), and the Sox will finish second. But I’m not Nostradamus. I can’t see the future. And there’s nothing in the first few weeks of the season that make me think—for better or for worse—the Yanks can’t win the division, or won’t. Same with the Sox or Toronto.
(Okay, I know Tampa Bay won’t. But hell, everyone knows that.)
So listen. You casual fans out there who don’t know what the 6 in a 6-4-3 double play means; you who think a suicide squeeze is a tactic pulled by the investigators on Law & Order; you who have never watched a game your team wasn’t playing in; you of the BO… do us all a favor and play Helen Keller for a bit.
That way we all can enjoy April Baseball for the one reason we should: we’ve got our sport back.
And for that I’m grateful.