Every year about this time it happens to me: Baseball fever.
I don't need to imply I'm exactly immune the rest of the year -- co-writing this little blog ought to be evidence enough of that, not to mention The Holy Books and the spending 15 or 16 of my 17 waking hours wondering and worrying about whichever 25 men make up the current roster of the New York Mets. But this is the time of year when the mania hits overdrive. No sooner had the Mets finished up with the Blue Jays last night than I flipped over to see how the Marlins were faring against the Yankees -- not so much out of Yankee hatred (though I was disappointed to see them win) but out of hunger for more baseball. Today, when 1 p.m. rolled around, I headed for FOX, knowing full well the Mets wouldn't be playing until the oddly precise time of 4:07 p.m., but willing to accept whatever game would await me. I found Boston-Philadelphia, and watched perfectly happily: Again, not so much to root for the Red Sox and the possiblity of a 12-game lead over Philadelphia, but just to have pitchers and batters and green grass for company. And it'll be like this until September, when the hammer comes down and every game is life and death (note to baseball gods: September cakewalk to division title would be happily accepted, rendering normal script moot) and I need some time away from baseball between Met games just to avoid going irretrievably insane.
I suppose the above confession means this is a perfect time to play the Toronto Blue Jays. Because it's really tough to imagine caring about these games except while in the full flush of baseball fever.
This is the flip side of a foaming-at-the-mouth yellfest against the Yankees, and the dark side of interleague play: obstacle after obstacle between me and giving a rat's ass.
* It's an American League game in an American League park. That means the designated hitter. I know it's a cliche to hate the DH, but cliches get overused because they're so well-suited for describing the world. Sunny days are nice, getting bit by a rabid dog sucks, and the designated hitter trashes an essential check and balance of baseball -- stick with your hurler late or pinch-hit in search of that desperately needed hit -- in brain-dead worship of offense that also encourages headhunting and allows one-dimensional players to march steadily up the columns of the record books when they should be in a Barcalounger or a duck blind. These things are all obvious, but they bear repeating. At least when we're playing an AL team at Shea we get to play by the real rules.
* It's in another country. Nothing against Canada, which very patient Canadian friends have finally persuaded me is not actually an ice plain dotted with bears and frightened people dressed very warmly. But particularly with the Expos now reincarnated on U.S. soil, a game against the Blue Jays feels like a weird, late-March exhibition. What exactly are we doing in Canada? Will something bad happen to us at Customs? When do we get to come home?
* It's the Blue Jays. The first year I collected cards was 1977, when the Blue Jays and Mariners made their debuts, and I was fascinated by all the players with strange caps airbrushed onto the general vicinity of their heads. Back then the Blue Jays had a certain futuristic charm: Their typography and even their bird logo was dominated by unconnected forms, giving them a Computer Age As Imagined In The 70s feel, like the dots and dashes of a then-rare computer printer. Now? They're Padres East: They always seem to unveiling new logos and uniforms, and the only certainty is that the result will be simultaneously awful and reek of desperation, the way stuff produced by biz-school consulting drones bullying brain-dead focus groups always is. This was an awfully good franchise for a long time (and this year could offer the Red Sox and Yankees a welcome reminder that the AL East is not their private pasture), but if the Blue Jays have an identity these days, it's lost on me.
* It's on turf. Granted, today's turf is not yesterday's cartoon-colored, billion-degree, no-give turf, but it's still turf. The National League is blissfully free of it. I like being blissfully free of it.
So: an American League team, with some weird/bad logo, on turf, with the DH, in another country. And you're telling me it's not an exhibition? Well, OK. I'll be watching -- the Mets are the Mets and I'm me, after all -- but I'll be happier when we're in Boston or New York, and happier still when we're playing Pittsburgh.