Gearing up for Baseball

Over the course of the next few weeks you are going to read tons of MLB season previews, and they are all pretty much going to say the same thing. Will the Yankees be able to contend with a sub-par rotation? Can Justin Morneau bounce back from his concussion? Do the Phillies have the greatest pitching staff of all time? Will Tim McCarver finally manage to swallow his own tongue while on air?

It’s going to get pretty boring pretty quickly.

So I promise that my season preview will be short, devoid of all analysis and insight, and at least 3% funnier than anything that Tim Kurkjian writes this season.

Here is my 2011 Shit That I am Excited About Season Preview.

I am excited about seeing Jason Giambi play baseball for another season

As a Rockies fan, I’ve had the privilege of watching Jason Giambi attempt to re-invent himself as a dangerous pinch hitter over the last couple of seasons. For some reason I get a tremendous kick out of watching Giambi play these days, and it wasn’t until recently that I really understood why.

Jason's here to make it all better, sonny.

What I dig most about the Giambino is the “I’m a broken man just trying to claw his way back” persona that he’s been carrying around ever since getting busted for doing steroids. He looks like he could be cast in a Noah Braumbach movie as the dead beat dad who once abandoned his family, but now has returned with a new sense of self awareness, a grizzled mustache and perpetually teary eyes.

Whenever I watch Giambi give a post game interview after hitting a walk off homerun, I half expect him to pull some random kid out of the stands, look him in the eyes and say, “Son, I know I ain’t been worth a damn to you, but now I’m here to make it ok again. Alright? [fighting back tears] The Giambino’s home now. Ok?” Then he’ll grab the kid with trembling hands, and they’ll share a sweet, redeeming embrace as the Jurassic Park theme music begins to play.

I am excited about seeing Derek Jeter get his 3000^th hit

Yes, I am legitimately excited about this and if you aren’t, you are kind of an asshole. No, it is not ok to root against Derek Jeter just because he plays for the Yankees and they are the “Evil Empire” or whatever, because every baseball team is just as rich and evil as every other team, and none of that shit has anything to do with Derek Jeter anyway.

Jeter has only ever conducted himself marvelously both on the field and off of it. Even when the Steinbrenners try to strong arm him out of his money and take veiled jabs at him through the media, Jeter manages to stay above the fray and keep his integrity. I honestly think that the only thing Derek Jeter cares about is hitting baseballs, lots and lots of baseballs, and this is why watching him get to 3000 is going to be so great.

And you know what I’ve gone and done now? I’ve totally jinxed it, because any time any athlete manages to become indisputably likable, some terrible truth about them gets revealed. So I’m just going to call it right now, Derek Jeter is a dog fucker. He fucks dogs.

I am excited that Joe Morgan has retired from broadcasting

Joe Morgan’s retirement from broadcasting may be the greatest thing to happen to baseball in the last quarter century, because Joe Morgan is just an awful God damn person.

For 21 years baseball fans who have wanted to watch Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN have had to do so at the expense of listening to an anti-intellectual baseball philistine blabber on for upwards of 2 hours. There has always been plenty written about Morgan’s thick headedness so I won’t rehash things here, but I will point out that aside from being stupid, Morgan had a voice that could drive a person to kill puppies.

For example, whenever a player was having a good night at the plate Morgan would always mention how comfortable the guy looked in the batter’s box. But the man was incapable of pronouncing the word “comfortable” correctly, so it would come out like “caahhmforble,” and he insisted on saying it over and over again.

“Well John, we’ve seen Crawford get 2 hits already tonight, which tells me that he’s really caahmforble right now at the plate. And when you’re caahmforble, it’s easier to get hits, so you always want to be caahmforble when you’re hitting.”

Morgan’s voice used to haunt me into the wee hours of the night on Sundays, “Tom, you just have to get caahmforble, and then you’ll fall right to sleep!”

I am excited to see how Miguel Cabrera bounces back from his DUI arrest

So Miguel Cabrera went and got another DUI, making himself roughly the 4,987^th drunkest person to ever player professional baseball.

I don't think "Sangre de Tigre" will play so well

in middle America.

I will be interested to see how Cabrera deals with all the extra attention and hand wringing that is sure to be heaped upon him throughout the season.

Personally, I think Cabrera should turn the tables and just go Charlie Sheen on everyone’s faces and start drinking between innings, babbling incoherently to the press and abusing any woman who comes within 15 feet of him. People will totally eat that up! I mean, look how popular Sheen is right now.

Oh wait, that won’t work at all, because Sheen is white and Cabrera is not and you’re all a bunch of racists.