Opening Night

Tonight is opening night for Major League Baseball. The Red Sox are opening at Baltimore.

I watched exactly one at bat.

All I had to see was Johnny Damon to know that baseball should still be considered in critical danger of becoming the national punch line.

At the beginning of his career he was touted as such a clean-cut, upstanding, role model type player.

For some reason the bushy dreadlocks, scraggly beard, and general homeless look don't exactly inspire confidence that he is a decent role model. His Frisch's Big Boy look of a year and a half ago was almost as comical.

If he is still considered one of the best baseball has to offer then baseball is in pretty dire straits. He's a mediocre player, at best and a questionable role model on his best days.

My prediction for the Red Sox: Damon will start out well enough, but come mid-season when other considerations start to take over his attention, as they seem to every year, he'll pull off a year end swoon to make the Miami Dolphins proud. As soon as he's no longer getting on base for the guys behind him to drive in the Sox will implode and sputter to another year of failure.

And all over Red Sox country, people will be saying: just wait 'til next year. Again.

For me, Johnny is the epitome of all that is wrong with baseball. He's overpaid for average performance, swooned on like the next coming of Ted Williams, and portrayed as someone he is not. His appearance tonight just reinforces my belief that this year nothing has changed.

I can't wait for football season to start up again. At least I have NASCAR until those wonderous weekends of fall come about again.