Like Baseball Even Exists!

It's very tough for me to make predictions for the baseball season. 

Scratch that. Actually making predictions is quite easy, particularly for baseball. The Red Sox and Yankees will finish 1-2 in the AL East, and the Pirates will be awful. There. I have said pretty much the same thing as every baseball analyst in the world.

The tough part, for me, is making predictions while simultaneously pretending baseball does not exist.

Let me explain.

I am one of perhaps a dozen Baltimore Orioles fans in the world. If, perchance, you do not follow baseball, the Orioles (Or O's, if you will. I will.) are a baseball team. They are bad. Very bad. They also play in the AL East, along with the Red Sox and Yankees, who successfully attract and load up on copious amounts of talent pretty much every year. The Orioles, on the other hand, nurture young players until right about when they become good, and then trade them for old/injured/legally retarded players who get payed roughly a bajillion dollars a year. This is why their opening day starter is some guy named Jeremy Guthrie. They also lost one game last year by a score of 30-3. That is a blowout in a football game. In baseball, well, let's just stop there. I have coped with garbage like this for years by pretending baseball has been on a ten year strike. I encourage fans of other crappy teams like the Nationals, Royals, and Rays (if there are any of them) to do the same. Support the MLS (go Revs!) or something.

Anyway, I digress. Here's some predictions for this season.

• In late April, Mark Prior will attempt a comeback with the San Diego Padres. After throwing only his second pitch, his elbow explodes into three separate pieces which settle in far-flung regions of the Earth. Believing if they can reassemble the elbow they will have the power to dominate the game, the Red Sox and Yankees will fight a massive world-wide battle to obtain the pieces. For some reason Destro is involved.
• The Pirates hold open tryouts. They end up with nine new starters and manage to beat the Orioles in interleague play.
• A-Rod has another stellar season, batting .312 with 51 home runs and 148 RBI. His performance is widely panned, as, evidently runs only count in the 9th inning.
• During an away game at Milwaukee, a stoned-out-of-his-gourd Dmitri Young will attempt to tackle and to eat one of the competitors in the sausage race. He will fail to do so, though, as he is unable to move his 300-lb girth fast enough. He will still be paid to be a professional athlete.
• Curt Schilling will claim credit for the Red Sox having the best record in the majors at the All-Star Break, despite not having thrown a single pitch. "I really can't thank myself enough," he says in his blog. "Without my strength and know-how, we couldn't have done this, and for that I am eternally thankful." He will then masturbate to is own image and ejaculate into his "bloody" sock. In other news, if you could not tell, Curt Schilling is my least favorite baseball player. Maybe he will write about this in his blog.

ACTUAL PREDICTIONS:

AL East: Red Sox

AL Central: Indians

AL West: Mariners

Wild Card: Yankees

NL East: Mets

NL Central: Brewers

NL West: Diamondbacks

Wild Card: Phillies

Red Sox over Mariners

Yankees over Indians

Red Sox over Yankees

Mets over Brewers

Diamondbacks over Phillies

Mets over Diamondbacks

Red Sox over Mets

So there you go. Predictions from someone who has not seriously followed baseball for nearly a decade. Probably as accurate as most pundits, though, so there you go.

NOTE: There won't be any updates next week, as I'll be in Venice, which, I'm guessing, should be a considerably better place to work than "off the coast of New Jersey". See you in a week and a half.