Ah, opening day. The culmination of months of wint'ry anticipation. If you're like most baseball fans I know, you wake up on opening day pretty much overjoyed that the season is finally here. It's the one day of the season that there is almost nothing (really) to complain about. Unless you're an old, bearded idiot with a penchant for retarded headgear.
Now I'm no Yankees fan, that much I admit. But I don't think they're necessarily bad people. Some of my good friends are Yankee fans. (Fun exercise: replace "Yankee fans" with "black people" and I sound like a terrible racist!) But I draw the line when Yankee fans say things like:
Only Major League Baseball is capable of screwing up what should be the best day of the season.
What is Mikey C. referring to here? The Barry Bonds saga? The WBC? The fact that Joe Morgan is still collecting a paycheck? No. He is cranky because he had to stay up past midnight (!) to watch his favorite 200 million dollar team play baseball.
When should games start?
One in the afternoon, Mr. Commish. Not 10 at night, when weary Yankees fans had to stay up until just to see the lineups introduced.
Ten o'clock? Are you kidding me? That is fucking outrageous! Is anyone awake at ten o'clock?! I don't care how long it has been since my team last took the field. My name is Mike Friggin' Celizic and when 9:30pm rolls around, I better be in the bed down the hall from the bed my long-suffering wife sleeps in, or else! (Note: Bonus FJM embellishment for the sake of unwarranted personal attack!) Also, isn't 99% of the American workforce working at 1pm? They would almost surely miss those 1pm starts, wouldn't they? What about them?
But surely, Mike, you must have taken some joy in some of the things that happened yesterday...
Mike Piazza went yard, but Barry "My Life is a Shambles" Bonds didn’t. Bonds, in fact, didn’t even get a free pass to first base. He did, however, get booed roundly, squarely and trapezoidally.
Oh, good! Evil Barry Bonds got booed! I'm glad you could enjoy that. Also, good geometry joke. And I'm not being hyperbolic! (Wink!)
Meanwhile, back in Oakland, the Yankees took advantage of the halftime break in the NCAA championship to slap Barry Zito around, scoring seven runs in the second inning, with four of them coming on a grand slam by Alex Rodriguez, who, this being April and not October, had no trouble coming through with a big hit.
It was closing in on 11 p.m. East Coast time by then, and the teams would make it all the way through the third inning before 11:15. They say suffering is part of being a fan, but this was ridiculous.
It was ridiculous that your team was firing on all cylinders in the first game of the season? Or was it ridiculous that your team caused Cy Young winner Barry Zito to have the shortest outing of his career? Good thing your reigning AL MVP only hit a grand slam and had 5 RBIs so you could still make a crack about him being a choker.
Not that I have anything against Yankees fans suffering. And I get paid to stay up late watching sports — that’s the story I tell my wife, anyway, and I’m sticking to it — so it doesn’t make any difference to me.
This paragraph confuses me. You are clearly a Yankees fan. Why do you not have anything against Yankee fans suffering? And yes, you do get paid to stay up late watching sports. Don't you? And if you don't, and this sportswriting gig is merely a smokescreen to deceive your estranged wife, what is it exactly that you get paid to do, Mike Celizic? Moreover, how do you explain the columns that get published in various media outlets? This sure is a great cover story you've got going! (I'm confused.)
Yes, they won in impressive fashion, but who saw it?
Umm, real Yankees fans? A's fans? Millions of people west of the Mississippi who care about baseball? Me?
Great day for baseball. Too bad, like everything else baseball gets its mitt on, someone had to mess it up.
Yeah, you're right. Baseball sure has screwed a lot of things up recently. That wild card thing was a huge disaster. Interleague play has just been one big money pit for the league. That WBC did an unmistakably terrible job of showing just how far baseball has spread around the world. And to add insult to injury, they scheduled the Yankees opener to start at 10 o'clock! Is there no justice?
This is why people hate Yankee fans. The team beats a consensus World Series contender 15-2 on the glorious first day of the season, and this guy structures his article around a whiny complaint that (gasp!) his team had to start the season on the west coast.
Mike Celizic writes regularly for NBCSports.com and is a freelance writer based in New York.
No shit.
