In addition to the regular reasons — the signaling of the start of summer, the lazy evenings, the smell of the grass, etc. — I love the beginning of the baseball season because of the previews in the newspapers. These have often come in the form of supplements of substantial length and breadth and tailored, at least to some degree, to each market’s franchise.
Or at least they used to. This has changed over the last few years, as print journalism has increasingly decreased either in terms of the number of pages each day, or completely disappearing. Even when it was a thing, these supplements took on more and more generic articles from wire services, as opposed to written in house.
In their supplement, The New York Times published this article on “The Endangered Species of Baseball,” milestones that have become obsolete as the game has evolved and not always for the better, IMO. For example, the sports media made a huge deal about the Mets-Royals game on April 3 being the first time in history (!) participants in the previous world Series faced each other on Opening Day. Like that’s supposed to be a good thing. IMO, interleague play has made a lot of moments which should be special practically routine.
Anyway, the Times also carried this piece on “Baseball’s Enduring Oddities.
Just on a lark, I picked up a couple of extra papers on Sunday, including the New York Daily News and the Star-Ledger.The News had some good stuff, but the most interesting piece appeared in the regular section: Christian Red’s four-page spread marking the 40th anniversary of The Bad News Bears. (There’s also a companion podcast). You rarely hear that one mentioned in the same reverence as Field of Dreams or The Natural or Bull Durham when it comes to great baseball movies. Very underrated.
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