It’s that time of year again. The smell of freshly cut grass is in the air, and the faint crack of a wooden bat can be heard in the distance, or at least in your heart. That’s right — it’s baseball season. The happiest time of year for me. Not only is the Gators baseball team getting ready to open its season — one that offers the hope of another trip to Omaha, Neb., and the College World Series — but major league teams are reporting for their first workouts.
Pitchers and catchers have already reported, and hope has arrived once more in my life. You see, dear readers, I have the misfortune of having to like teams that have had successful seasons only before I was born. Because my dad moved to the United States and his friends liked the people’s team in New York, I became a Met instead of a Yankee. And I thank God for that. I can actually appreciate the little successes.
Every year the Mets tease me with promise and hope early on, jumping into first or second place in the National League East. But by the beginning of September, they have usually blown whatever lead they had. Then they manage to offer some hope again, only to blow it on the last day of the season against the godforsaken Marlins.
But this year will be different. Last year, we blew it early because of extensive injuries. You try winning when 22 major players get hurt over the course of one season, and only 25 players are on the roster. The early losses made me realize how much I love having edge-of-my-seat hopefulness and excitement about the team from April until September and sometimes October.
Hearing David Wright of the Mets come out this week after showing up to spring training about a week early and say he expects the Mets to win the division excited me. It got me so pumped for baseball that I impulsively bought outfield tickets to the Mets-Rays game in St. Petersburg at the beginning of April.
Now that brings me to our on-campus sluggers, or should I say slugGators. We need to show our support for the Gators baseball team just like we do for the Gators football and basketball teams. The team is young, and it could use our support. Especially because heading into the season it’s ranked in the top 10.
At the very least we could use the distraction of another sport so we don’t go insane until spring break, which still seems forever away.
I just hope the UF team doesn’t take me on a trip like the Mets probably will this year or like the football team took us on this fall. We’ve already seen what so much promise and expectation has done to our two biggest programs. The football team failed at the second-to-last hurdle against an Alabama team we were stronger than, and the basketball team had their three-game-losing streak right after a great win against Michigan State. Our baseball team has some tricky away series to play this year against Ole Miss and South Carolina, so it won’t be easy to win the Southeastern Conference as it is favored to do.
Sometimes we take our other sports for granted because they don’t have the grandeur of football or basketball, but that hurts us as a university. We have the potential to be a triple threat in the college sports world, an athletic and academic powerhouse. My favorite time to be a Gators fan was from 2006 to 2008, when we won both basketball and football championships twice. If we can add a baseball championship to our repertoire, combined with our already strong academic reputation, we can become even more highly ranked and recognized around the world.
