Fish Tank: Best time of year

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August and September brings the buzz of basketball and the start of football and while some sports fans think it’s the best time of year, I don’t. Give me February and March, for the simple reason of optimism. I look forward to pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training and the smaller schools knocking off Goliath during March madness. I like how it warms up and you can start to shed the gym surroundings for the sight of a baseball diamond. If you haven’t caught on by now, I am huge baseball fan. I read the trade rumor blogs, the team pages and follow all the hot prospects, and with the best time of the year about to open up I feel robbed.

I feel robbed by Roger Clemens, Brian McNamee and Congress. I feel robbed by John Rocker and Bud Selig. And I feel robbed by my team for not making the additions needed to make a run at the World Series. But that the last one is beside the point.

I don’t want to take the approach of breaking down Clemens and McNamee on Capital Hill, nor do I want to touch the John Rocker comments. I do want to discuss how baseball and the fans were robbed of its’ purest form. The optimism a fan feels when players walk into camp in Florida and Arizona is exhilarating. Even the Royals and Devil Rays have hope on the first days of Spring Training. But with one day to go until camps open, scandal and steroids looms over the players and fans like a raging storm cloud. I can’t stand the fact that we’ll be worried about retired Roger Clemens instead of who could be the next “Rocket Man.” Yes we know over the years baseball has been corrupted, but let it go! We can’t change the past, we can only learn from it. Let’s concentrate on how to make the small and mid-market teams just as competitive as the Yankees and Red Sox. Let’s worry about breaking down the players union to level the paying and playing field so we don’t kill the fans at the gate.

To many times it’s the off the field garbage that is grabbing headlines, remember the days when baseball was full of guys like Ryan Howard and David Ortiz. I call them Teddy’s, guys “Who walk quietly and carry a big stick.” I am not saying baseball players need to be mute or subdued, but I believe we need to get back to the purity of the game. It’s about the fans, not the ‘roids, it’s about the pennant, not the crimes and it’s about the game, not the lawyers. It’s a game, that’s what people who can’t stand sports believe and for a sport like baseball that is trying to appeal to that demographic they are blowing it.

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