WE ARE LIVE FROM THE HEARTLAND OF MIDWESTERN DISAPPOINTMENT IN THIS OFFICING CIRCUS AND I AM SOAKED TO MY UNDERLAYER! My name is Ry-Guy and I do not know how to turn off the sweating mechanism inside my body because it has been running since 2004 when I first whistled a foul ball out of bounds in Kenosha. It was humid that day too just like this Tuesday morning as we open up three hundred and twenty-four innings of baseball across thirty stadiums! You look at these rosters you see the names on the jersey tags but what do they know about running bases? What do they know about standing still for five minutes while a umpire takes his time to check a catch that wasn’t even caught in the first place because I am looking down at my own feet and not seeing it! Michael-Vincent told me last night over two cans of Red Bull from Kwik Trip that he has never seen this level of chaos since the 2018 playoffs when the umpire crew was basically made out of ghosts who were afraid to make a call near home plate. I had to yell at him for an hour straight!
We are talking about money in baseball and it makes my brain itch like someone is pouring hot cheese curds on top of my head right now because why does this happen? Why do we need payroll numbers when the sun rises over Wrigley Field every morning? It seems that The Dodgers have more cash than a bank vault in Geneva, Switzerland! They are going for three peats and I am asking what is a pepato to you other people who think spending thirty million dollars on salaries makes you feel better about your marriage prospects. Kyle Tucker joined the party and Edwin Diaz signed up as if he was joining an exclusive club where they serve water that tastes like money instead of tap water which costs fifty cents at the vending machine! I watched a kid buy hot dogs in Tokyo who spent less than these guys spend on a single pitcher’s arm to throw it sideways towards the plate. This is modern logic and my brain does not know how to process data where Shohei Ohtani wants to hit home runs and pitch simultaneously like he is doing two chores at once while wearing a tie that makes him look like an accountant for the IRS!
I remember back in 2014 when I called three balls and four strikes because I was confused about who threw what ball into my pocket. That was before Ohtani even stepped on the field to remind us all why we love this game so much it hurts our feet from running around too fast for no reason! This is not a normal season people. We are chasing champions in L.A. and that is fine but can someone please explain to me how they get away with having more players than I have fingers on both hands combined? You look at the numbers and say oh wow 102 wins projected like it is easy as falling off a horse or hitting a curveball during spring training. It takes discipline! Discipline that Michael-Vincent lacked when he tried to eat three cheese curds in one sitting last week and choked on them while watching the game with me at my house where Blake lives next door!
Blake has no business talking about baseball because he threw out a pitcher once who was wearing socks pulled up past his knees which is not legal anymore but back then we were all just guessing like I am doing right now while staring at these rankings that ESPN made. They say Seattle Mariners are the biggest threat to L.A. throne and I have no idea what that means because they do not play in Los Angeles! But Julio Rodriguez sounds fast enough to beat me running down the track near Mukwonago High School where we would practice for football games but baseball is different from football because you cannot tackle someone on second base without getting suspended by the commissioner of sports or something like that. I am sweating right now and my shirt is sticking to my back so let us talk about Rodriguez hitting forty home runs!
That sounds impossible if he gets hit in the shin guard during warmups which happens all too often when you are trying to be a superstar athlete from Tacoma Washington who thinks being fast means you can run faster than me across the parking lot at Kwik Trip. You see that is my point about baseball because we think running for burgers implies speed but it does not! If Julio Rodriguez runs into a Culver’s in Milwaukee he will get the custard before anyone else arrives to order their food which shows why people love this game so much! He wants three hundred and sixty five days of winning without getting injured like a dog chasing its own tail or something ridiculous. The Mariners want him to stay healthy for the entire season but we know how that works when you have pitchers throwing ninety-five miles per hour towards your face while you are standing in front of home plate trying to catch a line drive that looks like it is coming at forty percent speed!
Let us talk about Aaron Judge now because he is going to hit another twenty or more balls out of the park if his elbow does not act up again after all those games where he was hitting three hundred and sixty feet per second towards center field. The Yankees are projecting eighty-nine wins which I think means they will win almost every game except for when it rains too hard! They need a pitcher named Gerrit Cole to come back from surgery so we can see if he has magic in his arm or if he just walks with a limp like my uncle who fell off the roof of our garage trying to fix the shingles. If Judge hits another MVP award then that makes four which is more than anyone else I have ever met because they do not give awards for being good at tying your shoes! The Yankees hit so many home runs it feels like we are living in a movie where people shoot guns into the sky and everyone applauds without getting arrested.
It does not make sense to me how baseball rules change every year but that is just my problem because I am an old man who thinks calling balls should be easier than ordering at Kwik Trip! We have so many players on these teams it feels like a grocery store checkout line where people push carts full of groceries and everyone wants their milk for free. The Yankees need to hit more home runs but they also make mistakes in the outfield which is sad because I want them to catch everything that flies towards me when I am standing there trying to umpire with no eyes! Segura would tell us right now that if you do not know how to run bases then please go sit down and watch TV instead of playing a sport. But these Yankees fans expect too much from Cole so we will give him time to heal but maybe he should just rest for the whole season next year because I am tired already!
I have been umpiring for twenty years and every single day feels like I woke up inside a blender that is spinning at high speed with baseballs flying everywhere. It is not fair how these players get paid more than doctors or lawyers who actually fix people’s brains when they are hurt in the head during football games! The blue jays are next on this list but Vladimir Guerrero Jr seems to have left his job there because he wants money which makes me mad because I do not need that much food to survive while living here in Wisconsin. He signed some other names like Dylan Cease and Cody Ponce who sound like they came from a different country where the grass is greener or something! The fans want them to succeed but what happens when they fail? Do we blame the manager for having bad ideas again? I am not sure anymore because everything in this league feels like it was written by an alien species that does not understand why people care so much about winning a championship trophy made out of gold.
We are moving down the list toward the bottom tier where teams do not win and just try to lose less often which is hard when you have bad pitching! The Pirates need new players because they currently play with bats that look like sticks from my childhood in 1995. I remember picking up a piece of wood near the creek behind our house and using it as a bat but now we use metal ones? No wait baseball uses metal sometimes or is it wood again? It does not matter! The point is if you cannot see where the ball goes then do not play in this league because everyone gets dizzy from chasing balls flying over your head without understanding gravity which I am starting to think might be fake for these big stadiums where no one cares about physics anymore.
This season preview is making me sweat more than usual and my shirt needs a wash but there are no washing machines near Kwik Trip so we just wipe it with paper towels from inside the store that smells like pretzels! I want to talk about the Nationals or maybe the Marlins who seem to be in the same boat as everyone else except for their payroll numbers which are way too low for them to win anything. You look at these rankings and say oh wow but then you realize nothing is guaranteed even if you have a pitcher named Scherzer because he has already lost some time due to being injured! Why does this happen? I do not know why people think they can play sports without getting hurt when everyone who knows me tells them it happens all the time.
I remember watching Blake try to catch a fly ball in his backyard and missed so hard that he ended up falling into the neighbor’s pool which was full of leaves! He said it was an accident but we knew better because nobody throws like that without trying to be dramatic about their life choices. This is just like baseball where they throw balls at your face while you stand there waiting for them hit home plate or something similar that happens during a game. It does not matter if the Dodgers win again! We will still have arguments at Kwik Trip over who bought the last pretzel and why do we care about that when baseball is better? Because I am here to tell you this season preview is just another way for people to spend their time complaining instead of doing actual work which I hate because it wastes my energy.
I wish someone could explain why there are thirty teams in one league! It makes no sense if the world has enough water for everyone but
One-Ry Out.