Welcome back October Baseball

Instant Replay – By Ian Kennedy

There’s the pitch. The crack of the bat…and I’m awake. Seriously? Baseball has been on all summer?

It’s that time of year again. One of two times when I actually follow baseball intently. The first, of course, being while the Blue Jays’ playoff hopes still exist. After that two-week period ends, I seem to slip into a sports hibernation for the summer. Sure I wake up occasionally for a golf tournament and completely once football and hockey get going, but it isn’t until October rolls around that baseball finally has my attention.

Maybe it’s the tradition of the World Series, or the renewed passion of the fans, but any way you look at it, October baseball is actually exciting. I don’t have to know anything about a team, underdog or favourite, star studded line-up or overachieving no-namers, I can be glued to my television watching every pitch.

Who wasn’t secretly (or not so secretly) cheering for the Minnesota Twins to knock off the Yankees? I know they didn’t stand a chance, but just for a minute, I thought it was completely possible.

And that’s the wonderful thing about October baseball. Any team on a hot streak can completely dismantle the should be champs. After a mind numbing and completely unnecessary 162 game regular season, the best regular season team can be knocked off by three hot games. All it takes is three well pitched games. All it takes is three games of solid hitting.

When it isn’t a best-of-seven series, anything can happen. That is what makes October baseball exciting. Just pick a game and watch.

It will never be the Stanley Cup playoffs or the Super Bowl, but the suspense of a good baseball game in October is enough to get me watching. Every pitch can change the game; every swing of the bat can be the winning swing.

I do hibernate through those summer months, because after the first 20 games of the baseball season, I’m bored. I’m bored by the impassionate play, the quiet stadiums, and the general monotony of the game. Let’s face it; baseball can be flat out dull.

For the record, I hope the Philadelphia Phillies win the World Series again this year. I generally despise the New York Yankees. You can’t dispute their success in building winners, however, when a team spends more than $208 million in annual salaries, and more than $60 million above any other team in the league on these salaries, something isn’t fair. Exhibit A(Rod): Alex Rodriguez makes more each season than the entire Pittsburgh Pirates team.

I guarantee if you gave the Toronto Maple Leafs an extra $60 million to spend on free agency each year, they would do some damage in the postseason too.

Regardless of who is playing, baseball is exciting again. The seventh inning stretch will no longer be used to wake myself up from a nap; instead, it will be to ease the tension I’m feeling from sitting on the edge of my seat.

Welcome back baseball, if only you could stay this exciting for all fourteen trillion regular season games. Although I do appreciate the background noise for my afternoon snooze.

Let the games begin.