Bet on it

So another Major League Baseball season is a few weeks away. If you're a betting person, you can check MLB odds at BetUS. But I can already tell you who will win this year. The Reds, of course!

I have, as you know, been enjoying warmer weather than most of you for the whole winter, but this past week was really the first week when I felt spring, you know, that deep-in-your-soul kind of rebirth that makes you crave to hear the words "Play Ball!" The season of baseball's beginning is precisely what makes it so different from other sports. We've been frozen all winter, suffering through a colorless void, artificial heat, and static electricity while scraping windshields and suffocating from cabin fever.

But we know all of that is about to end when our bat-wielding heroes go south to scrap off the rust in preparation for another grueling season. It doesn't matter if you're a Yankees fan with perennial hope for a winner or a Pirates fan for whom a winning season has about as much of a chance as peace in the Middle East (it could happen) - just the sight of those shiny new uniforms in Spring Training photos is physically stimulating and mentally warming.

Even with the decade of the aughts being a disaster for the Cincinnati Reds, I can't say it was the same as being a Pirates fan. At least we had good offenses over the decade. At least there was always an outside shot that we could play baseball in October. At least we had a 2004 Sports Illustrated cover. At least we had 2006 when hope survived into September.

BUT.

This year.

2011.

We are expected by many to repeat a division championship!

It has been 7442 days, 15 hours, 3 minutes and 10 seconds at the time of this posting since the Cincinnati Reds last won a World Series. Here's to hoping I can take that countdown off the page come November. Do we have a real shot? You can bet on it.

Get on your gloves!

It’s the first day of the year that is warm enough to wear a t-shirt outside, a Saturday at 1:30pm. I’m sitting outside in a suburban housing development where people buy houses to raise families and no single person would dare to dwell. To my left, I can see twenty houses from the back patio, five of them with backyard playgrounds. To my right are eighteen houses and four backyard playgrounds. That’s nine backyard playgrounds, the kind that cost hundreds of dollars to put up, tall wooden structures with swings and slides and little houses to climb in. Nine backyard playgrounds, empty, the swings used by ghosts born of the wind. Thirty-eight houses, not a single child outside playing.

The clock slips later into the day. Two children appear in a yard without a playground followed by a man in a green windbreaker. And then, a beautiful sight – a baseball being tossed through the air. The clouds that had become thick suddenly part, revealing a blue sky, weak with spring but brilliant nonetheless. I see the ball in the air then nothing, an errant throw to dad. The man in green disappears behind some thick shrubs of the same color and returns, taking a moment to demonstrate proper throwing. He holds the ball next to his ear and I know what he’s saying without hearing it. A toss, the ball disappears again, a pause, another little white sphere sails through the air. A perfect strike to dad.

I hear Homer kicking butt on the radio and feel warm sunshine on my skin and see kids playing baseball. There aren't too many things better than this.