Baseball’s Opening Day has finally come: that one American tradition that has for so long given fans a beacon to of hope throughout the cold, wind-whipping winter nights of winter has made it into our lives.
But after Opening Day, why should you watch Major League Baseball this year?
Because 2014 is looking to be one of the exciting seasons in recent memory, so expect headlines. Here are the four most compelling stories that will jump into the sports landscape, and give everyone a reason to watch:
1. Boston’s run to repeat as World Series Champions. Every year, we follow the World Series winner as the official ‘team to beat’, but never, since the Yankees three year run from 1998-2000, do teams win consecutive championships. The 2014 Red Sox are different. With a great deal of overlap from last year’s roster, Fenway Park will be rocking with the continued excitement and chemistry that carried the team to 42 one-run games and 11 walk-off wins.
Boston will have some concerns, however; namely with its inexperienced left-side infield defense (led by Xander Bogaerts and Will Middlebrooks). They will also need to accommodate Grady Sizemore, a one time All-Star plagued by injuries, as he makes his first Major League start in more than two years.
Though the team showed its consistency last year, never losing more than three games in a row, much of its success came from reliable role players and a strong bullpen—qualities that are difficult to constantly rely on. It will be hard for the Red Sox to recreate last year’s triumphs in a more competitive American League and at a time of growing parity in the game. But if they do, it won’t be without excitement.
2. The Yankees’ and Dodgers’ attempts to buy a championship. This off-season, the Yankees reverted to their old selves by fishing with furrowed determination for the best possible talent on the market, scooping up Jacoby Ellsbury, Brain McCann, Carlos Beltrán, and Japanese sensation Masahiro Tanaka; The value of those four contracts alone amount to around a half a billion dollars.
Yet in their attempt to build a superteam, the Yankees still find themselves with a pool of players on the downslope of their primes, or completely past them. Even the pitching staff, which should get a boost from newcomer Tanaka, is iffy, with C.C. Sabathia coming off of a mere 14-win season, a far cry from 20 win seasons of his earlier days. No matter how well the Yankees play, though, their star specked roster undoubtedly guarantees half-a-billion-dollars worth of story lines.
The Dodgers have had their own troubles keeping up their own much-hyped superteam. Topping their list is Cuban sensation Yasiel Puig, a never-a-dull-moment kind of player who runs wild on the base paths, powers through his uninhibited swing at the plate, and showcases his ability to gallop like a horse and throw like a god in the outfield.
But Los Angeles has four other All-Star outfielders on the roster, and manager Don Mattingly has shown his frustration with Puig’s child-like antics this spring. He has been, and will continue to be, a story nearly every day. Challenging the Yankees in the big-name game, the Dodgers will draw our attention with its marquee roster, headlined by Puig, Adrian Gonzalez, Hanley Ramirez and Clayton Kershaw, perhaps the best pitcher in the game.
3. New phenomenal players. Baseball’s pipeline of young talent is especially thick this year. Jose Abreu will be a new addition to the American public eye, as he spent his former career in Cuba before defecting and signing with the White Sox. In his last Cuban season, Abreu hit 33 home runs and drove in 93 runs, a season that would be impressive for a power hitting major leaguer, but something Abreu did in only 66 games.
Xander Bogaerts is ready to become a major fixture in the Red Sox lineup after showing himself to be comfortable under pressure after playing only a limited role on the team during last year’s World Series. Bogaerts had been touted as one of the best prospects in Boston’s minor league system, and his bright future begins this year, with the potential to already be one of the best offensive shortstops in the game.
Who doesn’t like a dangerous base stealer? Baseball has not had a legitimate threat, someone whose speed can not only change a game but carry a team, since Ricky Henderson in the 1980s and ’90s. The Cincinnati Reds have one this year in Billy Hamilton. In 2012 while in the minor leagues, Hamilton stole 155 bases, 106 more than MLB’s leader that year, and 25 more than Henderson’s modern Major League single season record. Baseball has not seen a 100-steal season since 1987, and Hamilton looks poised to break that 27-year drought.
4. Instant replay and the pace of games. One of the most common critiques of baseball of late has been the lethargic pace of games, as if they were meant to be slow and exhausting to watch. But the growing dead air between pitches has led many former fans to flee to the more action-packed NFL and NBA.
We may have seen the first roll in a potentially growing tide around baseball, as Miami Marlins president David Samson recently said that one of the biggest goals for his team this year is to reduce the duration of games. Samson and manager Mike Redmond will encourage players not to dawdle (either in the batter’s box or on the mound) between pitches, arguing that, “If we want to engage fans 18 to 49, we have to play faster.”
And play faster they will, unless, of course, the new system of instant replay slows the game down. Major League Baseball is finally expanding its instant replay to make virtually all field plays (not balls and strikes) challengeable by managers. The league thinks it has created an efficient system, placing a group of umpires at the league offices in New York, who, after reviewing the disputed play, will communicate with the umpires on the field as to what the correct call is. The system is past its experimental stages, but will surely come with criticism as ir marks an end to the traditional norms that have become staples of the American game.
So let us begin the season, if not with pomp and fanfare, then perhaps simply with high expectations for what is to come. Opening Day is here. That is something we can all celebrate.
