Starting today, and for the next 250 days if we’re lucky, there will be Chicago Cubs baseball to discuss.
It won’t all be deeply meaningful. Heck, it won’t all be pretty. But for like two thirds of the year ahead, we’re going to have some recent Cubs baseball to talk about if that’s what we’d like to do. Maybe it’ll be something profound, like how the Cubs’ resurgent competitive spirit mirrors our own as fans. Maybe it’ll be something mundane, like how that Alec Mills curveball totally hit the edge of the zone but didn’t get the call because of the way it was presented. Maybe it’ll be something light and happy, like how that Kyle Schwarber bomb totally destroyed that guy’s Italian beef and Clark the Cub brought him another.
The point is, that ability to talk about new and ongoing baseball starts today, with the Cubs’ Cactus League opener, tonight at 7:10pm CT at Sloan Park.
After the offseason we tracked, I am extremely ready to talk about baseball. Maybe I’m not as excited about the upcoming performance as I would have been if the Cubs had made significant forward-looking moves for the near or long-term, but I do want that baseball back. And the nice thing is that this is still a plenty talented team – my level of excitement about the anticipated results could be completely miscalibrated. That’s the delight of a new season.
So let’s go. Alec Mills gets the ball tonight against the A’s for a couple innings, Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo will give us a couple at bats at the top of the lineup, and it’ll being the slightest sip of Cubs baseball to start considering and discussing. I’ll take it.