School's Out

Fuck You Alice Cooper

With the impending arrival of Opening Day and the prospect of immersing myself in another baseball season intellectually comes the realization that, considering my humble, rustic university sharehouse accommodations - and the customary void of such amenities as basic cable and three-prong outlets, among other things - my enjoyment of all things baseball this summer will be largely dependent on the functionality of certain illicit websites. No, I don't budget money earned at my almost-$10/hour job (sadly, $10 would be an improvement - BC's wage laws are about as far behind the times as their revolutionary rhetoric) to subscribe to MLB.tv, so if the powers that be manage to bring down a major underground website, I'm the one left to seek out the nearest bar (which would be terrific and all, if I hadn't just quit drinking three months ago).

But whatever happens, in between trying not to write an essay about the momentousness of a historical event that happened shortly after I was born in a country I've never visited, I will park myself on some kind of chair - computer chair, barstool, borrowed couch, whatever the case may be - at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon to watch Ricky Romero do his best to dice through a lineup of slapdash hitters to make the likes of Rajai Davis, Corey Patterson and Scott Podsednik proud (from their seats in the clubhouse, mostly). I love Opening Day, and while the weather may still be toeing its own Mendoza line (I mean freezing, idiot) in Ontario, here on Canada's own little tropical island the official hallmark of spring couldn't come a day too soon. It's been baseball weather here for going on a month now, and if there's anything that might awaken me from my post-university existential daze, it's going to be the sweat smell of leather and cracking bats.

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. Google tells me this is a Leo Sayer quote, but I've never heard of Leo Sayer in my life, so I'm quite certain it's my addled brain's regurgitation of Tyler Durden. Regardless, it's one of those platitudes that in their New-Age sentimentality hold some small kernel of truth, especially for me today, and I mean beyond the obvious literal existential interpretation. Today was the last undergraduate class of my university career, and tomorrow is first day of the 2011 Blue Jays' season. Coincidence?

...okay, yeah, probably. I learned a long time ago that wearing the same number as John Olerud in my house league did not transform me into a sweet-swinging first baseman. (I was more like Johnny Mac, replete with the profusion of ground balls rolled over down the third base line.) Baseball fanhood is a one-sided proposition, and must by nature remain an unrequited, sort of stalkerish, committed relationship. My rational atheistic perspective should keep me from reading too much into random disconnected occurrences. The game remains the same, regardless of my patronage.

But fuck it. It's baseball season!