It’s baseball season

Second Place

Sports Story

Division 1

It’s baseball season

Colin VanderBerg

Grade 11

Vidette

J.P. McCaskey HS

Adviser: Brian McDonald

March is here, which can only mean one thing for sports fans. No, not March Madness. No, I mean serious sports fans. Yes, it’s time for Spring Training! (Excuse my little joke there). Yes, for those of us here at McCaskey who care about America’s Pastime, this is one of the best times of the year, because it’s almost baseball season! And I hope I’m not alone in being as excited as I am about this fact.

Now for those if us who are interested in baseball (I hope I’m not the only one who is excited about the season for the sake of baseball) this should be a very exciting season. I’m excited to see how the shake-ups in the National League will affect teams like the Phillies. I’m excited to see whether young, talented teams like the Rockies, Diamondbacks, Brewers, and Devil Rays will be able to find success. I’m excited to find out whether the Mets, with new ace Johan Santana, will be able to live up to the hype and go far. And most of all, I’m excited to see what will happened in the American League East. Will the Red Sox continue their success, will the Yankees actually have a bad season (for their standards), and will my poor Orioles finally be able to pull together a winning season?

What really concerns me is the amount of “baseball fans” who aren’t excited about those things. No, what they really care about is the controversy, the drama, which in baseball has become known as the Steroids Cloud that hovers over the game. Yes, these people find it so interesting to find out which players have taken steroids, which upper-clubhouse executives have supplied them to the players, and what these players, executives, and the game of baseball are going to do about it. Now I know about the whole “integrity of the game” thing, and the “these players need to be weeded out,” statement. But I don’t believe these points should jeopardize what really matters: the game itself.

Now I’m not saying that there are a lot of people in this school that care about the drama of the Steroids Era ( I don’t even think I can pick out any by name), but there are people like that out there, or else the media wouldn’t be perpetuating it as much as they are. The media gives people what they want and apparently they want to hear about steroids.

So I think its time we put all this behind us. All of the steroid crap is just distracting from what really matters: the game. So I don’t know about the rest of you baseball fans, but this season I’m going to concentrate more on my Orioles than about this whole Roger Clemens fiasco.