There’s 200 days or so of baseball to come this season and it can be quite intimidating to jump into the deep end of the baseball viewing pool.
To help, Refrigerator Logic is providing a list of reasons to watch every Major League Baseball team for the 2008 season. Anyone that’s read all the team lists should be able to pull up the MLB schedule on any day in early June and find reasons to enjoy any contest on the board that night.
Please join in the comments to add your own reasons. Tell everyone why your team is worth three and a half hours of their lives on any given day. Make us care and we’ll be there with a tasty beverage and an appreciation for what you feel each time your team takes the field.
Transactional Analysis
These two gentlemen either have an odd sense of fashion or $112 million of Arte Moreno’s money. (Then again, that’s the kind of money that allows your fashion sense to be labeled “eccentric” and not “homeless chic”.)
Torii Hunter’s 5 yr/$90m contract brings his Famous Proven Veteran persona to the Angels, effectively replacing Career Year Wonder persona Gary Matthews, Jr. Both men are wildly overpriced, but this isn’t a concern for baseball fans; Arte can cover the financial bill.
More importantly for viewers, Hunter’s an entertaining player and person. He’s still got enough speed and savvy to track down balls in center and the flair to make it look oh so pretty. He may spend an awful lot of striking out, but one can forgive Moreno for taking a gamble (though one may also wonder why Andruw Jones wasn’t worth the same gamble for fewer years).
The fine fellow to his left is World Series Champion persona Jon Garland, acquired from the White Sox in an exchange of expiring contracts. He may be only a third starter these days, but he fills a need better than the exiting Orlando Cabrera. On the other hand, Cabrera was well-liked ’round these greater Los Angeles general area parts and Garland will be expected to succeed immediately.
In both cases, the cost for Moreno will come more from his ego than his wallet. If another offseason of expensive acquisitions fails to push the Angels out of the first round of the AL playoffs, his ego may have finally written a check that his bank account can’t cash. Watch to see how both men handle the pressure and the effects of aging on their skills. (more…)
You glance to your left to see who will be protecting this well-kept ground with you today and you see Josh Hamilton. Yes, that Josh Hamilton. The one that spent 2002-2005 with “undisclosed off-field problems” that came in smokable, ingestible, and injectable forms and led to an indefinite suspension from his only viable place of employment. You were pretty happy for the guy when he was scooped up by the Reds from the Cubs in the Rule 5 Draft last season and crushed the ball. I mean, hey, there but for the grace of God, right?
Then you keep looking past Hamilton and you see this massive human being that walks with a bit of a limp. When you realize it’s Milton Bradley, you’re not sure if the limp is from his right ACL tear or the weight distribution from the massive chip on his right shoulder. He’s got a full deck of incentives in his contract to stay healthy and not attack every authority figure perceived to be in his way, but you’re not completely positive he’s playing with all those cards shuffled in.
