Happy New Year baseball fans, the long cold winter is behind us and Opening Day is here! Over the past month I've been counting down the days by tweeting favorite baseball quotes while keeping up with the latest spring training news. This year I'm feeding my addiction by participating in 3 fantasy leagues; these teams will keep me engaged all season long -- long after the Astros have fallen out of the pennant race.I'm already looking towards August when my summer baseball trip takes me back to Fenway Park (15 years after my first visit in '99) for the Red Sox-Astros 4 game series 8/14-17.
Before going on the record with my predictions, here's a look back at some of my favorite baseball quotes in countdown fashion:
Counting
down the days until #OpeningDay with one of my favorite
baseball quotes. #MLB in 30 days!
"People
ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I
stare out the window & wait for spring” ~Rogers Hornsby
"The
trouble with baseball is that it is not played year round." ~ Gaylord
Perry #MLB #OpeningDay in 29 days
"People
think we make $3-4 million a year. They don't realize that most of us only make
$500,000."~Pete Incaviglia #OpeningDay in 28 days
"Life
will always throw you curves, keep fouling them off...the right pitch will
come, when it does be prepared to run the bases" ~R.Maksian #MLB #OpeningDay in 27 days
26 days
'til #OpeningDay #baseball
"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins
in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer,
filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come,
it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."~A. Bartlett Giamatti
"You
gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of
little boy in you too"~Roy Campanella #OpeningDay in 25 days
"I
don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase
it."~Rogers Hornsby #MLB #OpeningDay in 24 days
"I've
come to the conclusion that the 2 most important things in life are good
friends & a good bullpen"~Bob Lemon
23
days 'til #OpeningDay
"Baseball
is like church. Many attend but few understand."~Leo Durocher #MLB #OpeningDay in 22 days
"A
baseball park is the one place where a man's wife doesn't mind his getting excited
over somebody else's curves”~B. Francis #MLB in 21days
"It’s
a mere moment in a man’s life between an All-Star Game and an old-timers
game"~Vin Scully #MLB #OpeningDay 20 days
"Baseball,
it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in AZ."~George
Will #MLB #OpeningDay in 19 days
"Baseball
is fathers and sons. Football is brothers beating each other up in the backyard"~Donald
Hall #MLB #OpeningDay in 18 days
"A
life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."~Jackie
Robinson #MLB #OpeningDay in 17 days
"Bob
Gibson is the luckiest pitcher I ever saw. He always pitches when the other
team doesn't score any runs"~Tim McCarver #MLB in 16 days
"A
man once told me to walk with the Lord. I'd rather walk with the bases
loaded."~Ken Singleton #MLB #OpeningDay in 15 days
"Why
does everybody stand up and sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" when
they're already there?"~Larry Anderson
2
weeks 'til #OpeningDay
"Baseball
statistics are like a girl in a bikini. They show a lot, but not
everything."~Toby Harrah #MLB #OpeningDay in 13 days
"There
is no greener green than the green of a baseball field."~Buster Olney #MLB #March31Madness #OpeningDay in 12 days
"Fans
don't boo nobodies."~Reggie Jackson
#MLB 11 days until #OpeningDay
"Baseball
is my favorite sport because it is orderly. Football is organized confusion;
coaches dont know anything until they get it on film...and basketball is just
fellows running up and down a court in their undershorts."~Red Barber #MLB #OpeningDay in 10 days
"The
saddest day of the year is the day baseball season ends."~Tommy Lasorda #MLB #OpeningDay in 9 days
"There
are 3 things in my life which I really love: God, my family, & baseball.
The only problem...once baseball season starts, I change the order around a
bit."~Al Gallagher #MLB #OpeningDay in 8 days
"Baseball,
to me, is still the national pastime because it's a summer game. I feel almost
all Americans are summer people, that summer...is what they think of when they
think of their childhood. It stirs up an incredible emotion within
people"~S.Busby #OpeningDay in 7 days
"When
they start the game, they don't say, 'Work ball.'
They
yell, 'Play ball!"~Willie Stargell #MLB #OpeningDay in 6 days
"You
spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball; in the end it turns out
that it was the other way around"~JimBouton #MLB in 5days
"This
is a game to be savored, not gulped. There's time to discuss everything between
pitches or innings"~B.Veeck #MLB #OpeningDay in 4 days
"A
hitter's impatience is the pitcher's biggest advantage"~Pete Rose
"Hitting
is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing"~W.Spahn #MLB in 3days
"You
can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock.
You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and...give the other man his
chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game if them all"~Earl Weaver #MLB #OpeningDay in 2 days
2014 MLB Picks:
I heard on Olbermann the other night that only 2 of the 6 division winners last year were repeat division winners from the year before (Tigers and A's), and this was the case in 2012 as well. Before last season, it seemed many of the experts we're predicting teams like the Angels, Nationals, Reds and Yankees to reach the World Series but neither of these teams even made the playoffs. Predicting baseball's post-season is a shot in the dark but here's my picks:
NL: Nationals, Cardinals, Dodgers, WCs: Giants, Reds
AL: Rays, Tigers, Angels, WCs: Red Sox, Royals
Nationals over Cardinals in NLCS
Rays over Tigers in ALCS
Nationals win World Series
