Detroit, Cleveland, and Minnesota lost yesterday, which means the first-place Royals take on the first-place White Sox today at the Cell.
Your Opening Day pitching matchup is Gil Meche (3.61 FIP in '08) versus Mark Buereuherheulehelerle (3.94 FIP in '08). Buehrle has only had one season as good as Meche's 2008.
Gil Meche
#55 / Snarling Smirking Pitcher / Kansas City Royals
6-3
214
R
R
None of Your Damn Business
(Although on his MLB.com picture Meche looks happy... Matt Garza level happy.)
The off-season and Spring Training of brilliance continues friends, as Hillman has named Farnsworth the setup man.
So the journey of a thousand cliches begins today, a day late, in Chicago.
Maybe I'm just not enough of a pagan, but the changing of the seasons doesn't really alter my mood or level of hope or outlook on life or anything else. No, and although I might lose my English Major credentials to say so, I don't see much of myself, or America, or America's agrarian past or innocence or anything else in nature or the changing of the calendar or in sports and the sports calendar.
In the blossoming of spring or in a birdsong or in a baseball game, I just see things. Things that might be interesting or beautiful nonetheless, on their own.
The reality is, the Royals have everything in front of them. Not because it is April and two hundred years ago everyone stopped being cold and planted crops this time of year, and sun-dappled lovely maids and swains frollicked in the fields. No, but just because their season has started. Forget the poetry and second-hand romanticism, ye Boswells, and just talk about the real miracle right in front of you. The slate has been wiped clean, not symbolically, but in reality. The standings have been re-set. This is baseball's version of Easter.
I don't think they can do it, but they have the chance to prove me wrong, to prove everyone wrong. In sports, every year, you start over (why, nobody knows, wouldn't a multi-year league be somewhat appealing?) in real life you don't. You just go and go and go and some things stick and some don't, good and bad. In any case, your mistakes and failures hardly ever get erased, they just accumulate. For most things, you get mathematically eliminated pretty early, and you just have to deal with it. You have to find your own reason to keep playing, even though you'll never win the pennant and the All-Star team was named last month.
Who among us wouldn't jump at the chance to start today 0-0?
I can't wait any longer. The first real game thread of 2009 starts now.