Without further ado, your Idiotville feel-good story of the week:
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/26228145/only-opening-day-preview-need
Oh I know, this is supposed to be a local good news article about our hometown of Idiotville. There was plenty of good this week, too. Booking.com threw a plug for Erie into their latest commercial. A great looking popcorn shop opened up Tuesday on West 8th Street. A woman stole a pair of pants and then tried climbing into the hospital ceiling to escape the cops, but fell through to the floor and was arrested – everyone loves a story like that.
None of that is baseball, though. Baseball means spring. It means the smell of fresh cut, beautifully manicured grass. It means a little dust blowing up from the dirt. It means the sun setting over the 3rd base line as you sip your beer, slouch a little in that hard plastic seat and watch the purest competition life has to offer. Football, basketball, hockey, badminton, croquet – they’re all great, and maybe you like one or all of them better than baseball, but none of them define springtime.
It’s a uniquely special time for Idiotville denizens, too. UPMC Hamot Park is a gem right in the middle of downtown, and though the Seawolves won’t start up until next Friday, April 5, at home against the Trenton Thunder, you know the start of the Major League Baseball season means buck nights are on the way.
A slightly dated but still glorious shot of UPMC Hamot Park (back when it was still known as Jerry Uht). | Image via blog.erieevents.com.
The start of a new season is also a time for unchecked optimism about your team. Are you an Indians fan? A Pirates fan? One of those insufferable jerks who root for the Yankees or Red Sox? All of them are coming off winning seasons, three of the four have legitimate star power and a real shot at a World Series title, and the Pirates may well avoid a last place finish and end up comfortably in the mediocre range of things again. If you’ve followed the Pirates since the mid-1990’s like I have, you know that’s not nothing.
Jameson Taillon – the Pittsburgh Pirates best player and greatest hope for a playoff push in 2019. | Image via Joe Sargent, Getty Images.
So tonight, while everyone else is clutching their brackets and obsessing over whether Gonzaga or Florida State will earn the right to probably lose later on anyway, flip on over to our national pastime. Take a deep breath, and get yourself a beer. As the first pitch comes in, know that the hitter waiting for it is doing so in the same exact way that Kenny Lofton did 25 years ago, or Roberto Clemente did 25 years before that, or Babe Ruth did 40 years before that. Once the first pitch is thrown, anything can happen. Anything.
Kenny Lofton doing a Kenny Lofton thing. | Image via Getty Images.
Yes, by the way and for any of you baseball diehards out there, I realize the MLB season actually started two weeks ago with two games in Japan, but I’m not counting that and neither should you. Not when the other 28 teams were still grinding along their Spring Training schedules in the Cactus and Grapefruit leagues. So this week’s Something Good starts today, and it’s shared with the whole country. Enjoy it, because well before the fall, we Pirates fans will probably be looking forward to the next Opening Day.
Idiotville 