Opinion

Springtime is a phenomenal time to be a sports fan.

It starts with March Madness, which was better than ever this year. Baseball season kicks off. The NBA and NHL playoffs get started. Even football is in the fold, with the NFL Draft taking place at the end of April. What's not to love about spring sports?

However, it's not all sunshine and lollipops this spring in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

The 20-inning pitchers duel that the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets endured on Saturday was one of the craziest games I have ever seen in my life. And that is no exaggeration.

While I was disappointed, and even mad about the loss directly afterwards—as a fan, I had to appreciate what I had just witnessed.

Thoughts were flying through my mind at a million miles per second. Some entering and exiting my head before I could even try to rationalize them.

I’ve long been a proponent of MLB teams being allowed to trade draft picks or even draft slots. They do it in every other sport, why not baseball?

Just think about it: a Stephen Strasburg or a Bryce Harper comes along and a team like the Yankees want him badly. But what can they do? Winning teams draft too low to get a guy like that.

Ah, but not so fast, kimosabe. What if the team with the worst (or second-worst) record is allowed to trade that pick? Now what would some team pay?

I've said it time and time again.  And this is the final straw.  Cincinnati Reds manager Dusty Baker needs to be fired.  Either Sunday night or Monday morning.

If, for nothing less, the disposition of this club that can and should compete.

I don't hate the man.  In fact, Dusty seems like a stand-up dude. 

But he is an absolutely horrible handler of young talent—where the Reds are stacked.

Oh, Mighty God of Baseball:

‘Sup? Your humble servant, Rogo, here.

The new baseball season has not been kind to Scott Kazmir.

After beginning the season on the DL, his first start of the season came against the defending champion, New York Yankees.

Previously, I wrote that there was a possibility that Kazmir, once so hyped, full of potential, had reached his athletic peak.

If you're a Mets fan right now, you might be just a little nervous. If you look at the current situation, you see a shaky 3-7 team that isn't hitting, pitching, or winning like the way you thought they might. You see a team that is on the brink of spiraling into another season that could be as bad or worse than what you saw last year. 

Well, don't panic just yet. There will be better days to come. 

The Oriole Way

Peter Angelos, the Baltimore Orioles owner, has no idea what that means. It is a term every baseball fan in Charm City is well aware of, and a methodology that Angelos has seemed bent on destroying since he bought the ball club in 1993.

The Oriole Way had been very successful before he bought the club. For over three decades, from the 1960's to the 1980's, the Orioles had the highest winning percentage in all of sports, and the winningest team in all of baseball. They won six American League Pennants and three World Series over that time.

Red Sox third base coach Tim Bogar made a dunder-headed decision last night when he sent 1B Kevin Youkilis home on David Ortiz’ sixth-inning double into the right field corner. I don’t care how he tries to rationalize the decision, the fact of the matter is that there was NO reason to gamble in that situation.

In baseball, there are such things as intentional walks on defense. Could there be such a thing as intentional strikeouts on offense? That is a question that may have been put to the Yankees last night.

You're the home team, with one out in the bottom of the fourth. You have just made the breakthrough of a formerly tied game; first, having loaded the bases, and then scoring all three runners on two subsequent hits, leaving you with men on first and third, ahead 4-1.