Over the last few years, bandied over the airwaves, blogs, and print media, it has been said that the sweetest four words of the year is the phrase, "PITCHERS AND CATCHERS REPORT." I disagree, though it is a step in the right directions.
Spring training is simply that, training, and after more than a few games you quickly realize that he baseball being played there is as meaningless as minor league. It is the true mirage of the Arizona desert, very nice to look at but nothing when you bend to the fountain to drink. Look! I saw Derek Lee, he's leading the cactus league in RBI's... somewhere some very lonely, disillusioned man keeps track of those stats, but he is not heard from except for those few weeks that the teams return to the desert, or swamps for the east coasters.
Opening Day, Today, is truly when it is time for celebration. Today, everyone is in first place, even the Pittsburgh Pirates and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. This is the sport whose season starts with the actual growing cycle of our continent for a reason. First day of baseball, first days of spring. It's like the beginning of the semester, everyone has an "A", everything is new and nice and never stops making me grin.
I can only wish good luck to all of the other teams starting their seasons, except for Cincinnatti of course, and hope that all the changes in the off-season come to fruition. I have a feeling that Lou will get the job done or else. The Cubs even get a new owner today , as I am typing this they are announcing the sale and I am getting details from the Mike North morning show(uh-oh).
Apparently the new owner, Sam Zell, already has interest in the White Sox and is expected to sell the Cubs right away. How's this for a Cub fan spin on the sale, even a Sox fan knows the Cubs are more valuable and liquid than the Sox. Honestly, I hope he has Mark Cuban on his speed dial.
Even more good news, it really looks like the Cubs are going to give Zambrano his money, enough to make him happy and save face in front of the other overpaid pitching free agents. The numbers being put out are 5 years and 80-85 million, ones that I can swallow much easier than those given to Soriano. I can see us starting to sweat in 3 or 4 years about getting his resigned again because I know "Z" will live up to this one. Soriano, well, I see us wondering why we are paying him so much towards the end of his deal but that is the going rate and he just might make us a great team now.
This post is also posted in my Cubs Blog, which I started because somewhere I read you should have a different blog for each topic, and I'd been writing post-long comments on too many other Cubs Blogs(Crawley's Cubs and BleedCubbieBlue [Check them out for spiffy lineups and better pics, you're welcome guys for all that extra traffic I'm sending your way, hope you have the bandwidth for it!]).
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