Let us rejoice and be glad in it!  (Author’s Clarification: the rejoicing and gladness components aren’t expected to survive the crushing disappointment of the following months, so you better rejoice the f@$% out of this week.)

I mean, good morning all you Orioles fan(s) out there; it’s opening day!  I’m glad to be here and living just a few blocks from that Mecca of America’s Pastime (or should I keep things Protestant and say: "that Jerusalem of America’s Pastime" [although I suppose most Christians in the United States haven’t really been to tour the holy land (too many of the scary B’s [Brown people and Bullets])], so it’s probably more like "that Following Jesus Discovery Channel Special of America’s Pastime"), Camden Yards.

You’re probably sitting there thinking: what the hell just happened in that last paragraph, it was like he started with one point about baseball and just ended up being racist!  If you are attempting to read a simplistic take on American sports and suddenly your brain is overwhelmed with parenthetical ponderings to the point that you cease to care and immediately navigate away from www.thebaltimorons.com (tell your friends), it can mean only one thing: Dan’s back!

That’s right dear reader(s), after a month long hiatus/pity party/glass cage of emotion, everybody’s third or fourth favorite Baltimore sports writer (depending on whether or not you count Dave’s adjustments to the site as writing) is back and just about as refreshed as a 22 year old in a 47 year old’s body can be (Author’s Note: I’m like Miguel Tejada in that way…).  I know it’s been a long time coming, and you all have been inundated with so much information about the world of sports that you have desperately been missing my uninformed opinion, so let’s get right to the point: I’m glad Joe didn’t buy the Jim Leonhard jersey, we will miss Rex and Bart even though saying so out loud sounds like two Yorkshire terriers have passed away, Jay Cutler is a little bitch with a hell of an arm, and watching video interviews with Joe Flacco leads me to audibly cheer whenever small bubbles of what would have to be considered personality break the otherwise calm, uni-browed surface.  I think that pretty much covers everything that’s been going on with me in the past weeks, so, without further adieu, let’s talk baseball.

I have never particularly cared for baseball; it takes along time and can sometimes be dreadfully boring.  I know the ballpark experience is supposed to help, but I can eat a hotdog in the time it takes a batter to get through his routine and step in the box and the “9-Inning Pretzels” they sell out on Howard Street barely last through the top of the order. I know what you’re thinking: Dan, maybe there are just certain things you don’t understand about the great sport of baseball, and maybe you have an eating problem.

First of all, I’ve never had a problem eating; it’s the nuances like chewing and stopping that have evaded me.  Next of all, you’re right, I don’t think I’ve always understood what makes baseball great.  The therapist in me realizes that this lack of appreciation dates back to my developmental years when I played little league, and the writer in me has determined the rationality is two-tiered:

For starters, I’ll have the potato skins.  Ha-ha, just a little eating joke there to keep being self-referential!  For starters, I was often positioned in deep right.  How many kindergarteners do you know that hit the ball with power to the opposite field?  I believe the coach was trying to tell me something about his preference to have me picking up dandelions rather than ground balls.  The coach was my father.  I suck at baseball.

Second, one of the times I did get to play infield, I played the pitcher’s mound standing right behind my dad in the event that: (a) someone actually made contact with the ball, (b) it were to trickle directly forward, and (c) I were to be paying attention. With a runner on third, the batter tapped a slow ground ball to my position to set up the routine throw to first.  Instead, I picked up the ball and ran towards home, careening off the potential scorer before he/she (I don’t remember, it was co-ed and we all looked pretty much the same back then) could cross the plate.  Even back then I knew that you’re either first or you’re last and, being a winner, that didn’t leave much choice at all.  Unfortunately that play was against the FUN-damental spirit of the game that recreational sports are based off of, and it was back to dandelion detail for our hero.  I don’t understand baseball.

So what caused the shift in my outlook that would allow me to reach a point of explaining my excitement after a mere 800 words?  The answer is simple: Jim Freakin’ Palmer.  While it was impossible not to like the Orioles in the late 90’s, from the chemically enhanced lead-off hitting outfielder to the mustachioed clean-up hitting first baseman to the cross-word puzzle solving pitching Ace, I still didn’t appreciate the greatness of our past-time until Jim Palmer referred to it as, “a game of adjustments”.

It just all suddenly made sense!  The rationale behind being considered amazing at something if you succeeded a mere 40 percent of the time, the fact that managers get paid money seemingly to show the fans what they would look like if the everyman had to wear tight-fitting jerseys, the complicated gesticulations of a man in a pooping position that get sternly shaken off by another man who is staring intently at the first one’s crotch while a third man awaits the pitch by routinely touching his own genitalia; I was enlightened!

Since that point I have been intermittently hooked.  Spring isn’t spring until you hear the sound of a ball off a wooden bat and the subsequent indescribable noise that occurs when that ball is enveloped by the glove of an outfielder, retiring the Orioles’ side three-up, three-down. Yeah, I get it, we suck, but I still can’t wait to get into Camden Yards, I can’t wait to eat the good cheeseburgers (outside Pickle’s Pub [they have onions in the middle]), and I can’t wait to experience the great city of Baltimore in the springtime again. I guess I don’t have to wait any longer… this is the day, let us rejoice and beat the f@$%ing Yankees!