Major League Baseball: It's Good to Have You Back

It's minus-six degrees outside. There's rain in the air that sometimes mixes with snow. It's windy, it's grimy, and it's an ugly shade of grey outside. This means it's April, and...

Baseball is back in town!

It's strange, isn't it? How something so great can start at such a crummy time of year?

Football comes in the heat of the summer, while basketball and hockey are accompanied by the beautiful colors of fall.

But our favorite teams have to travel way down south just to be be ready for the start of the season in a month of crummy weather.

Sure, the weather proved to be the downfall yesterday for the final season opener at Yankee Stadium between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Yankees. But aside from that, baseball does an excellent job at persevering through the weather.

Side note: I'm not going to lie, but I kind of think that yesterday's "rain-out" was because of Babe Ruth. Honestly, they're tearing down his house...you would be pissed too, right?

I have two trains of though on this:

1. There won't be a home game played at Yankee Stadium all year because the Babe will just slip the weather Gods a five, causing all sorts of obscure weather patterns. He will keep this up until New York nixes the "New Yankee Stadium" plan.

2) This is the onset of the second coming of the "Curse of the Bambino". The Red Sox had to deal with it for 86 years, and now it seems as if Ruth is prepared to pass on the suffering to the Yankees. Either way, it's something that could help the Jays, so I'm not complaining.

So what if the weather stopped a game in the almighty city of New York?

It's just going to happen tonight. (Although this isn't great for me. I'm going to miss watching my first opening day in four years thanks to work...and The Curse 2.0.)

And it's not like the past two days have been boring. 

Thanks to the rain-out, I got to catch the Kansas City Royals take on the Detroit Tigers, which turned out to be a great substitute.

As a Jays fan, I don't cheer for either team. The Tigers are rivals and the Royals...well...if you cheered for the Kansas City Royals and the Toronto Maple Leafs I don't think you'd be let on the observation deck of tall buildings.

But they certainly put on a display, capped off by an astounding throw from Brandon Inge in center field to gun out Mark Teahen at home. Sure, the Tigers lost on a bloop single, but it was a great game nevertheless.

And what about the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox slugging it out to a 10-8 win for the Indians?

Or Carlos Gomez trumping Torii Hunter in the battle of old and new between the L.A. Angels and Minnesota Twins?

Or Jeremy Guthrie getting shelled by the D-Ra...sorry, Rays?

Haven't you missed these moments?

And then there was the National League.

Johan Santana made a great first impression on Mets fans to say the least, dominating for seven innings against the Florida Marlins. He looked anything but nervous—the word I'd use is scary, as in "he looked f*#$ing scary to hit against".

And there was Kosuke Fukodome's debut with the Cubs, which won him a few fans in the Windy City, including the Woz, with a dramatic, bottom-of-the-ninth, three-run homer to tie the game.

(Although this is actually something that Milwaukee fans should worry about. Congratulations, Eric Gagne is still the same guy who barely made the Red Sox World Series roster last October.)

And apparently Jake Peavy learned to hit in the off season, as he almost literally won himself last night's season opener against the Astros.

I love the fact that he's helping himself out, but Jake, you getting hits doesn't help me win my fantasy league, so just get a few more K's next time alright? On the bright side, I didn't get to find out if I was right about Trevor Hoffman.

But all those "fantasy repercussions" are forgotten about, because baseball is back.

It means that school is almost over, summer will be peeking its head out from behind those big ol' grey clouds, and for the next few months, everything is as it should be. 

That's what makes this sport so great. Everything about it just feels so right. The drama, the joy, the heartbreak, it just works.

Hello baseball, it's good to have you back!