I love baseball. I love Opening Day. Anybody familiar with this column probably isn't surprised by this. But something I don't love is the media -- particularly the New York media. It bothers me how just about anything can be blown up so much by the press, and subsequently, the rabid New York fan base.
I think you can see where I'm going with this. CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira, to whom the Yankees committed a combined $341 million during the offseason, struggled in their respective debuts in pinstripes on Monday. Sabathia went less than five innings without striking out a batter and looked unsettled on the mound, while Teixeira, a Maryland native who was booed relentlessly by the Baltimore fans, went 0 for 4, including a pivotal inning-ending groundout in the bottom of the eighth with the tying run on third. And of course, the New York media made it look like Armageddon.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be a story -- I mean, what am I writing about right now? And I'm not trying to imply that everything the New York media has said is wrong. CC Sabathia has to relax if he's going to be successful in New York; he can't actively put all the pressure of his contract on himself for every start. And Mark Teixeira will have to learn to handle the boos if he's going to make it in pinstripes -- not just from opponents but from the New York fans themselves. After all, every hometown player ends up hearing it from the New York fans at some point, from Carl Pavano to Mariano Rivera to Alex Rodriguez to even the Captain himself.
But just because they had difficult starts doesn't mean they're doomed to failure. It's just one game. There are 161 more left in the season. And in New York, we've got seven and eight more seasons left of CC and Mark.
The thing I like about baseball is how many games there are. It's odd, because that's probably one of the things that most people hate. On top of it being a relatively slow game with intermittent action, there are so many contests that it's hard to get caught up in the importance of any single one. It's not like football, where every play and every game can end up having a tremendous effect on a team's end-of-year standings.
But to me, that's what's nice about baseball. It's not arbitrary -- or at the least, it's less arbitrary. If you go on a 10-game winning streak, good for you, but you've still got a lot left to prove. In football, if you go on a 10-game winning streak, you're saying, "Hello, playoffs."
Take a look at the 2003 Kansas City Royals. They started out the year 11-1. If a team did that in football, you're not just talking postseason; you're talking home-field advantage and legitimate Super Bowl contender. But the Royals finished the season at 83-79, just over .500, and missed out on the playoffs.
How did that happen? Because luck can prevail over the course of a dozen games. As any sabermetrician will tell you, a small sample size means nothing. You need a larger pool of data if you're going to determine anything meaningful from it -- like, say, which teams are deserving of a spot in the playoffs.
So let's wait a while before we start drawing any conclusions about teams or players or contracts. I don't care what anyone says -- April standings mean next to nothing.
Mark and CC, if you're reading this (and let's be honest, you probably are), you've got a lot of time left to prove yourselves. Baseball is a game not of fast starts but of prolonged endurance.
And CC... you should still probably put down the Twinkies.
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