In what looks to be a long, miserable season for the Oakland A’s, Yoenis Cespedes is giving A’s fans a reason to pay attention.

Yes, I am going to talk about the A’s, so deal with it.

It is only been seven games, but Cespedes has hit home runs in three of them. The second home run being the best, measuring 462 feet and almost landing above the luxury suites at the O.co Coliseum

The best compliment I can pay Cespedes after seven games is that, I make sure not to miss a pitch he sees. If Kurt Suzuki or Josh Donaldson is up to bat, I might decide to take out the garbage, but if I know Cespedes is coming up, the garbage can wait.

My first thought after seeing the 462 foot blast, was to wonder if he was on steroids. Anytime I see something amazing in sports now, I wonder if the athlete cheated to do the amazing feat he just did. It’s the way many sports fans are wired in 2012.

After discussing it with my wife and us both agreeing that Cespedes hasn’t failed a drug test and we should give him the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise (Yes, my wife discusses baseball with me). We also realized that we don’t know what kind of access he would’ve had to performance enhancing drugs in Cuba. We were going to enjoy the fun of seeing the A’s have an exciting player for the first time since Frank Thomas, back in 2006. You can’t count Matt Holliday or Nick Swisher, because while they had power, they didn’t bring that same level of anticipation and excitement Frank Thomas did when he approached the plate.

There is a question about how Cespedes will adjust once the pitchers of the American League start to identify potential weaknesses he has at the plate and attack them. Seeing how he adjusts to the first adjustments by the pitchers will tell us a lot about the ceiling of Cespedes.

Cespedes came to MLB with a reputation for striking out a lot and he has lived up to that reputation, striking out 11 times in the seven games he has played. There hasn’t been a game that he hasn’t recorded a strikeout. He needs to lower that amount, unless he wants to become the next Richie Sexson, where the impact of his high home run totals are offset by his high strikeout totals. There was also a play in Centerfield  this past Saturday where he took a few steps in and watched an Ichiro Suzuki line drive sail over his head, allowing Dustin Ackley to score a run and put Suzuki on third. That gaffe isn’t concerning, unless it becomes a reoccurring problem, but for now we will call it an isolated incident.

The gigantic elephant in the room when talking about any impactful A’s player is will the organization trade Cespedes before too long. I can’t tell you that won’t happen, but he will be traded if the A’s don’t get their new ballpark in San Jose, Ca. Even though GAP clothing heir John Fisher and his billions own a large majority of the franchise, the A’s continue to cry poor and say they can’t compete without a new stadium. If Bud Selig doesn’t approve the A’s plans to build a new stadium in the San Francisco Giants territory of San Jose, Cespedes is gone.

With all that being said, A’s fans have been starving for excitement and Cespedes brings that. Who knows what the future holds for Cespedes in an A’s uniform, I just know as an A’s fan in April of 2012, I am excited to have a player on the roster that other American League teams have to account for and will motivate more than 10,000 people to go see a game.

To me there’s nothing like it in the world of sports, Major League Baseball’s opening day.  Though it’s just one game on a 162 game schedule, every player on every team will tell you that first game of the season carries a lot of weight.

Expectations are set and though each team has the same goal, only one will achieve it.  It will take half a year to see the results, there will be many surprises, disappointments, injuries and excitement.  And it all begins today.

For fans it’s a chance to see all the new players  in your teams uniforms for the first time, for players it marks the beginning of a 6 month journey with their second families.

The anticipation of spring training coming to an end creates a stirring of anxiety and eagerness all around the sport. Whether you’re a fan or a player opening day signifies that it’s time to be a kid again.

The grass is cut, the parks are open, the smell of hot dogs and beer engulf your sensory receptors and the feeling of being surrounded by an adult playground puts 40,000 plus people in a state of euphoric past time.

To a baseball fan, this is our Christmas, a day that we can look forward to every year, something familiar and comforting that correlates with the season changing and the beginning of new lasting memories to be created.

If you’re like me, it’s always been this way.  You’ve grown up on baseball and for as long as you can remember it’s been a part of your life.  You see the game differently than the average fan, you have an emotional investment, you root for an extra inning game (free baseball).

To the general sports fan, and casual baseball fan this doesn’t make complete sense.  For many, baseball is associated with October when the World Series is played, and the only team they ever hear anything about is the Yankees.

If you associate baseball with the (awful) postseason broadcasting of Tim McCarver then keep reading as I attempt to break down what it is about baseball that produces an unparalleled experience and connection to it’s true fans.  If you don’t enjoy baseball that’s perfectly fine, but you may be watching it from the wrong perspective…

Baseball is America’s Greatest Soap Opera

There are  many different things that are occurring in major league baseball throughout a game and season that the average fan just doesn’t realize or pick up on.  I assume the greatest deterrent to the average fan becoming a true fan of the game is the pace in which it is played.

I understand the rumblings from causal fans about the game being too slow thus losing interest, but for me and fans alike, the game is perfectly paced.

The average nine inning  game takes almost exactly 3 hours to complete, if you go into the game mentally committing that you’re going to invest three hours into the event, you’ll surely forget about time and just enjoy the game for what it is.  I didn’t buy a ticket, pay for parking, food and beverages to have it be over in two hours. If I’m at a game I want free baseball, I want extra innings.

Two years ago I decided to buy the MLB Extra Innings package so I could watch my hometown SF Giants while living in Southern California.  My girlfriend at the time took quick notice at the fact that I was watching eight different baseball games on one screen and I knew I had to somehow convince her that it was her idea to be watching baseball with me.

I began to explain how baseball is really like a soap opera, it has drama, action, suspense, heartbreak and betrayal, oh and it’s also on everyday.

At first I thought I was doing a great job in tricking her into liking a sport by relating it to something she already was familiar with, but as I got deeper into my campaign of relating baseball to reality TV, I realized I wasn’t tricking her or lying at all, baseball really is the best soap opera on the planet, and she quickly got into it!

What a great year it turned out to be, as we got to watch the Giants do something they haven’t done since moving to San Francisco, they won the world series and it was an emotional roller coaster along the way, worth every penny of our time.  

Once you get to know a team and their personalities you develop an emotional interest.  Then you begin to get to know the division your team plays in, then the league, and soon you’re familiar with all the big name players and rivalries that make baseball so entertaining.

Everyday there is something that happens in baseball that builds on a story for tomorrow or escalates an event from yesterday.  Each year players are traded and released, rivalries are intensified, new ones are created and revenge is sought after on those teams that kept you from achieving your goals last year.

The game itself is a miraculous creation and event.  A small hard ball thrown 90 mph with precision, trying to be hit by a round bat is an accomplishment in itself.  Hit it 450 feet to win a game in the bottom of the ninth and you’ve got more excitement and drama than any soap opera can offer.

Get To Know Your Team

My goal here isn’t to try and convince everyone that they should be a die hard baseball fan, but for the casual fan and the non fans to realize that there is much more to baseball than they perceive.  It’s truly one of the greatest fraternities you can be a part of and will always be a major part of my life and America’s past time.

A great way to get into the game is to get to know the players on your local or favorite team.  Nowadays that is easier than ever through social media, interacting with players through twitter and facebook is easily accessible and creates a personal connection to the players on a team.

Baseball games are a great social event, whether you’re with your friends, family or a date, the casual fan will enjoy being at the park more than watching at home, the die hard fan understands the best seat in the house can sometimes be in your living room with an HDTV.

The takeaway here is this, don’t let the media decide your perception of baseball, the Yankees really aren’t very cool, and if you watch only during the postseason that’s ok but understand Tim McCarver is not the voice of baseball.  Understand that everything a player does on the field is for a reason, pitchers throw balls on purpose, batters make outs on purpose, if there’s something you don’t understand about the game, simply ask someone who does, or better yet ask me via the comments section below.

It’s baseball season, the dreaded drought between football and baseball is over, the smell of fresh cut grass is in the air, the season is changing, sunflower seed shells blanket the stadium grounds, life is good, let’s play ball.

Happy Opening Day.

My name is Brannon Larson, and I’m sort of a big deal around here; you’ll learn soon enough, at which point your life will change for the better.

My lucky number is twenty-three. This isn’t for the obvious example (although I did worship him for all the right reasons), but for his cross-town buddy: Ryan Sandberg. The man, the second baseman for the Chicago Cubs from 1982 to 1994 and then again in ’96 and ’97, meant the world to me, so much so that I requested to play second base in little league despite having a Kenny Powers arm (I jerk my own stick, get used to it).

The love grew from his stats: the great season in ’84 (.314, 200 hits, 114 runs, 19 HRs, 19 triples and 84 RBIs for a slow, white guy), the .989 career fielding percentage, the 282 dongs and the .285 career batting average. Not flashy or anything worth what would be a 9-year, $195 million contract these days, but productive and efficient. The man also had a smile, and when you’re 11 years old a cocky smile can be enough for fandom (hence by love for the other #23). I requested a 1982 Topps season set for my eighth birthday in order to get Sandberg’s rookie card.

Still, why Sandberg? The stats were the main part for me when I was younger. From eight until I was starting high school my Bible was a cheap, worn-down book I’d been gifted by my parents: “The Baseball Year-by-Year Encyclopedia.” It went up through the ’92 season, six pages per year, three dedicated to stats and anecdotes from the American League and three more for the National. Along the bottom of the pages were the raw numbers, the leaders in all categories that season.

I wrote book reports that I turned into my parents based on this book: how the RBI leaders’ numbers from 1925 to 1945 fluctuated pretty dramatically; how stolen bases was the most inconsistent, major stat to track; how there was this guy named George Herman Ruth who seemed to succeed most seasons at everything. I was a statistician before I knew any other words that ended in “-ician.” I was good at telling how successful someone had been at their job compared to how their peers were doing. I knew how to hold two seemingly contradictory opinions in my head, simultaneously (i.e., Ted Williams is a God; Ted Williams is a total dickhead), without forcing one as the truth (I know now that both held true for Williams).

I cared about numbers related to baseball before I cared about numbers relating to myself, like hourly wages then salary, like GPA then SAT scores then scholarship totals, like number of women I’d kissed then . . .

All this is to say that when I’ve prepped for fantasy baseball drafts I’ve driven myself B-A-N-A-N-A-S. I’ve made lists, and charts, and graphs that I never consulted but was sure would make a difference somewhere down the road. I worried I hadn’t compared Dan Haren’s WHIP from his time with the A’s to his Dback days with enough adjustment for weaker hitting. I worried that drafting Ryan Braun is 2010 would mean he wouldn’t have the rebound year some people thought, so I’d be stuck with a small, Jewish outfielder no one wanted (not the smartest choice).

I made a list of the four best VORP players at every position and then made another list of how I’d prioritize drafting them all. I spent dozens of hours prepping for something I’d spend hundreds of hours managing, and worrying about, for the next six months.

Which leads me here: I’m not playing fantasy baseball this season because I’ve got a relationship, with a real life female human organism, that I don’t want to fuck up. And ‘wasting’ hundreds of hours over the summer is a good way to push the envelope, especially when your loved one only knows that the Giants and Athletics are in different leagues because of that one year when her house got messed up during the earthquake before some game.

My advice and ideas will be born of these tenets: I’d like to save you time when making big decisions; I’d like to make you laugh; I’d love to make you cry; I’d like to give you something smart to say to your dipshit friends who think Hanley Ramirez is going to have a great year and that the Miami Marlins (which still sounds weird to me) will end up north of .500; I’d like to give you my opinion on the baseball topics of the day and then see you transmit them, as your own, without giving me credit, to your effeminate boss; I’d like to enter your house and penetrate your wife.

I’m Brannon Fucking Larson, and you’re welcome.

I’m sure Tim McCarver is a nice guy, and was a good ball player in his prime, but the guy is a horrible broadcaster and is the main reason I know where the mute button is on my tv remote.

Plain and simple, Tim McCarver is ruining the post season for true baseball fans and Fox needs to fire him.  They needed to fire him a long time ago but for some reason they feel that he and Joe Buck symbolize the fall classic.  Unfortunately they symbolize the post season as a painfully frustrating series of games, and McCarver is the reason for it.

I understand why Fox continues to employ his services, they don’t want to break the continuity and tradition of the post season.  They feel that McCarver and Buck appeal to the “average” baseball fan and help those fans associate a sense of familiarity with what the post season is.  Fox cares about viewers and ratings, and drawing in the average fan during this time is apparently more important to them than appealing to the true fans who quite simply know the game better than McCarver.

The guy is just painful to listen to and has ruined the world series and post season for me. The post season is supposed to be the most exciting time of the year for baseball fans worldwide, yet is greatly hampered by having to listen to the verbal throwup that comes out of Tim’s mouth, repeatedly.

I even think his partner, Joe Buck is annoyed by him. Often he is just silent after Tim speaks, I think in awe of either the stupidity that comes out of his mouth or because of how utterly simple his comments are.

2005 World Series, Game 4: “Roy Oswalt is a drop and drive pitcher. What is a drop and drive pitcher? He is a guy who drops and drives. Very simple”.

Who does he think he is broadcasting to?  It’s not my first day on earth Tim, say something that has some substance to it. I’ve actually been annoyed by Tim McCarver and Joe Buck for years, but recently I realized that Joe Buck isn’t so bad it’s Tim McCarver who is shitting all over Joe Buck and the rest of baseball.

I did a quick search to see if there were others out there who felt the same way about me and my frustrations with having to listen to the world series on the radio as my 50 inch plasma HDTV sits powered off.  Turns out there’s a whole plethora of true fans who are tired of being forced to listen to an idiot broadcast the biggest games of the year.  There are petitions to Fox to get Tim McCarver fired, facebook fan pages devoted to his awfulness and baseball blogs alike this one that have expressed their disgust in Fox’s unwillingness to listen to what their fans want.

Tim if you ever happen to read this, know this, you have more money than me, you’ve had a better baseball career than me, but I am cooler than you, and you are a horrible broadcaster.  Please retire, before you are forced out of the game for good by angry fans like me who can’t stand to hear your pathetic attempts at knowing what is really going on during a game.

I’d love to showcase some of Tim’s stupidest broadcast moments here but at the risk of getting hit with copyright fines I’ll leave you with this Family Guy clip, ironically a show that is broadcast on Fox.