The Weak In Rock

While it may not seem like it to folks on the east coast of the U.S. this weekend, winter is almost over.

Pitchers and catchers report to MLB Spring Training camps next Thursday.  Oh joy.  All will once again be right with the world soon.  Don’t get me wrong, I actually found the NFL season interesting this year, even though the playoff games leading up to the Super Bowl were far better and more interesting games, as usual.  It’s just that football constantly reminds me of all that is not right with our culture.  It’s violent, it’s anti-intellectual and it’s reactionary.  Baseball, on the other hand is, well, just civilized.

It helps that the Oakland A’s got a lot better in this off-season while the Angels just got older and slightly less talented.  It also helps that Scott Hatteberg has finally found a home.  The Reds just signed Scott to a one year deal.  He won’t get nearly the playing time in the Reds organization that he got with the A’s in the past few years but he will get to contribute and show Adam Dunn how to play first base.

I am sad that Hatteberg won’t be with the A’s this season.  As a fan, Scott was a perfect unlikely hero.  He was a backup catcher in the Red Sox organization before he came to the A’s and was given the unenviable role of replacing Jason Giambi.  Everyone thought Billy Beane had finally lost it with that one. A guy who’d never played first base and never been particularly impressive replacing the guy who carried the A’s on his back into the playoffs two years in a row.  But Hatteberg turned out to be an excellent defensive first baseman and pretty much the only clutch hitter the A’s had for three seasons.  And Scott will never be forgotten by A’s fans as the guy who came off the bench to knock in the home run that capped the A’s record setting 20 game win streak.

Mostly I’m just happy that I’ll have something to think about besides politics soon.  The world of politics has been relentlessly depressing in the last few months.  I’ll take some baseball please.

I’ve had dozens of things I’ve wanted to write about in the past two weeks, really I have.  But at every turn in the media I kept running into people who’d dealt with the topic I wanted to address and just did it better than I ever could have hoped to.

Maybe I’m just suffering from a bad case of writer’s block.

So, instead of actually creating any new content I upgraded the tools I use to create this here blog to the newest version of WordPress.  Then since I was in a mood for spring cleaning I dumped the formatting I’d been using ever since I switched from Blogger to WordPress many months back and opted for a new look.

Yes, if you can’t create something new just dress up what you’ve got.  It’s been working for Hollywood for decades now.  Been working even better for the big record labels.  I’ve gone back to a dark background with white type, was able to use a bigger version of the pic of me wiped out on the concrete in some dog foresaken gas station in the middle of Arizona and reintroduced the Bull Durham quote that used to feature prominently in blogs past.

I had sort of hoped to be inspired by the new digs.  Nope.  Oh well.  Enjoy your day.