Clarion Content

The honchos who run baseball are trumpeting the records for April victories set by several franchises, including the hot starting Arizona Diamondbacks and the less noticed, St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs. Despite picking them fourth in the N.L. West in our baseball predictions, the Clarion is willing to concede the D-Backs are for real and will be around to stay. We let our blind hatred of Randy Johnson influence our feelings about the entire team. The Cards, on the other hand, are a paper tiger, who will likely finish in the middle of the pack in a mediocre N.L. Central.

"Wow!" You might think, three clubs set franchise records for wins in April. The thing the baseball P.R. people aren't telling you is that these franchises are playing more April baseball games than ever before. Of course, they are setting franchise records for April wins, in the golden age of baseball, they didn't start the season until the second or third week of April. (eg. Truman threw out the first pitch of the 1950 season April 18th.) There was a reason they didn't start the season until mid-April. It is too flipping cold. Last year, there was a week of April snow in Cleveland that made a messed up a season's worth of schedule. The Clarion gave you our thoughts on the mockery made of opening day this year. Further compelling evidence that holding games in nearly the calendar winter is wreaking havoc on the integrity of the game, it is May 1st and only one player in the American League, Texas Rangers center fielder, Josh Hamilton, has started all of his team's games. Ridiculous. Baseball wasn't meant to be played in freezing cold. The players get hurt.

Way to go M.L.B.!! All this so they can hold the World Series in the bitter weather of the last week of October. Greed, it's faaaaaaaaaaantastic. Does anyone wonder why baseball has lost its position at the pinnacle of American sport?

Labels: baseball, Predictions, sports