Storm Clouds? Nah.

My TiVo recorded the exhibition game on Sunday, and when I settled in to watch for a little while that evening, the first thing I saw was Jerry Hairston’s at bat, and within 30 seconds he was beaned and on the ground. So there it is, I thought. That's how this season is going to go. Mark Prior will never throw again, Kerry Wood will never walk again, and Jerry Hairston is down for the count. Add that to the fact that Greg Maddux is better off throwing in Advil commercials than major league games, Aramis Ramirez is too fragile to play in the WBC, and Dusty Baker just threw the newspaper at the wall because he got stuck on a Kids’ Jumble (ROOIKE stumped him), and I figure the Cubs will be lucky to win 62 games.

*Sigh* Here we go again, they say. It’s impossible to muster enthusiasm, they say. It’s going to be a long season, they say.

Who knows? Maybe everything will go wrong again. Maybe they’re not that good. And it’s certainly a safe way of approaching things to expect the worst.

Safe... but where’s the fun in that?

Not me. I’m not letting this dirt fester during my spring cleaning. Nope: I’ve swept that crud out the door and opened the windows for some fresh air. Innocent until proven guilty as far as I’m concerned, and the trial doesn’t start for 4 more weeks.

Wood will be throwing again in practice before the season starts I figure, and he’ll be ready for games sometime along the way. Maybe it’s heart clouding judgment, but so what? What good has judgment ever done me in March anyway?

With Prior, the logic seems to be that if the Cubs are treating him like an injured pitcher, he must be an injured pitcher. Occam’s razor at its finest, right? Except there is also this: it is consistent with the facts to say the Cubs are treating him like a pitcher who has been injured, ie cautiously. Now, if I were the Cubs, and I had a talent like Prior to manage, and he had been sick over the winter, wouldn’t one expect me to be over-cautious to the extreme? Isn’t that a good thing?

Hairston seems to be fine. Ramirez seems to be fine, other than a finger infection. Guzman seems to be fine. Hill pitched well, even in the dry air where his curveball wouldn’t hook as well; he even was clipping up at 94mph, a bit faster than I remembered. Lee got a hit against the Giants in an exhibition game for the USA team. Maddux is taking the mound today. In other words, things are going alright.

There is a time for analysis but there is also over analysis, and the chatter I hear seems to be leaning towards the latter. If that’s what people want to do with their time, more power to them. But there is also the matter of enjoying our spring, because otherwise winter wins. (Not that I can say too much about that, being as we had approximately 7 scattered days of winter this year in Austin.)

The other thing I noticed in watching the one exhibition game is that the team seems loose. Of course, they were hitting the ball well and that helps, but still. That was the first time I’d seen Sing and Pie, and they both ripped doubles. So maybe there are clouds over this team, but clouds are hardly a storm.

I’ll be looking for some of that enthusiasm with Lee and Zambrano this evening when I watch the WBC. I don’t know yet whether I’ll like the WBC, and I’ve been taking a wait and see kind of approach. Bob Brenly made a good point that it’s a strange competition because so much of tournament or series baseball is pitching, and the pitchers have pitch limits. But maybe it’ll still be fun to watch, and maybe it’ll help Lee & Barrett & Z catch a hot start.

In a couple of weeks, maybe it’ll be time to start panicking. You know, when Prior is off the 25-man and on the 60-day, and Kerry Wood has had something amputated. Or whatever else the gods have in mind to torture us. It’s just that if the torture is coming, I’d rather not apply it to myself ahead of time. I’d like to enjoy the calm before.