Opening rant

Opening Day again in Major League Baseball, when the sun shines warm upon your face, the birds sing sweetly in your ear, and the air is perfumed with the scent of hotdogs and Cracker Jack. Unless, of course, you're anywhere north of Kentucky.

In which case it will be cold, dark and wet, and you'll be wearing a parka and using the hotdogs as hand warmers.

The perfect environment for the Blob's annual Opening Day tradition, Bitching About What's Wrong With Baseball

What's wrong with baseball is the Blob's baseball team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, are going to stink like moldy cheese again.

What's with baseball is the Pirates' owners are miserly, penny-pinching, skinflint-y people whose souls have been sucked out through their nasal cavities, which is why they fire-saled the living hell out of the Pirates over the winter, getting rid of their only decent pitcher, Gerrit Cole, and also Andrew Freaking McCutchen, Pittsburgh icon and living baseball saint.

What's wrong with baseball is they've been replaced by people named Joe Musgrove, Michael Feliz, Josh Smoker, Colin Moran and Corey Dickerson, none of whom springs readily to mind as a baseball superstar, and who might in fact be part of the witness protection program.

What's wrong with baseball is that, as a result, the Pirates are going to be the worst team in the NL Central, worse even than the Reds, who stink like moldy cheese, too.

What's wrong with baseball is the moldy-cheese-stinking Pirates are scheduled to open up today in Detroit against the Tigers, which is contrary to the laws of both God and nature, on account of it's one of those benighted interleague games and the baseball season should not, not, NOT begin with interleague play. NOT.

(The Blob would also add that, while interleague games are fine in theory, baseball has ruined the concept by playing too damn many of them. A significant piece of the cache of the World Series has been lost as a result, because now the Series usually matches two teams who've already played eleventy-hundred times during the season. There's no mystery anymore.)

So that's what's wrong with baseball.

And what's right with baseball?

What's right with baseball is the Tigers are going to be awful themselves, on account of they have pretty much the same collection of minor-leaguers and kids who finished the season with a glorious 6-24 spurt last season.

What's right with baseball is the moldy-cheese-stinking Pirates therefore have a shot at being undefeated after today, which would likely qualify as the highlight of the entire season.

And what's wrong with that?

What's wrong with that is the forecast in Detroit today is for a high of 50 and biblical deluges of rain.

Play ball!