Spring Preditictions

I must have been in a rare mood a few months ago to buy three baseball magazines.  I mean, who does that when his team is on pace to lose close to 110 games?  Oh, that’s right.  At the start of every season, there’s still hope, even for the White Sox.

With the All-Star break here, I thought it was time to give the magazines a closer look.  Yes, I buy without reading.  I buy because it’s something I’ve done since I was a kid; there’s a 1968 baseball magazine somewhere in the basement, under the Lionel layout, maybe.  I don’t read what I buy because it bothers me too much to be reminded of the difference in talent between my team and the one on the North Side.  If you think I’m bad, you should see my daughter.  Clare dropped by to watch the Home Run Derby Monday night and screamed like our guys had won the World Series when Bryce Drew outhomered the Cubs’ Kyle Schwarber for the crown.

Anyway, the three magazines in question are Athlon Sports; Lindy’s; and Street and Smith.  All three of them have the Yankees beating out the Red Sox in the AL East (not so far, guys), with the Nationals winning the NL East; that one all three of them might want to revise.  Athlon and Lindy’s also would do well to reconsider the Mets finishing in second behind the Nats; I have them as a possible 100-loss team.  The Sox are ranked either third or fourth in the AL Central.

I could point out other predictions that would make the neighborhood psychic cringe in embarrassment, but that would be cruel.  The thing is, you want predictions on Opening Day.  They’re a measure and a guess, just what fans need to settle into a season.  The only prediction that bothered me was Athlon’s rating of the top forty high school draft prospects.  Hey, guys, we’re talking 17- and 18-year olds.  Let’s leave them alone, OK?  Adolescents have enough pressure in life.  How a national magazine rates them—or chooses not to—as athletes could be the proverbial straw breaking somebody’s confidence, or worse.

Elsewhere, the good guys beat the NL 8-6 in ten innings Tuesday night to pull ahead 44-43-2 in All-Star play since that first game at Comiskey Park in 1933.