Play Ball!

by Lou Parrotta

As spring sprang upon us last week, so too has the 2002 Major League Baseball season. In Florida and Arizona, where winter seems to never matter, 30 teams are working into shape to provide another wonderful summer of enjoyment.

This season will provide many interesting things for baseball fanatics to experience. It will be a time when one team, the Montreal Expos, will be controlled by the other 29 and skippered by the legendary Hall of Famer Frank Robinson. It will be a season when contraction looms for teams like the Minnesota Twins, Kansas City Royals, Florida Marlins, and Oakland Athletics. It will be a season still affected by the tragedies of September 11th, as new crackdowns on visas have elicited questions surrounding players' true ages. Over sixty players have actually entered Spring Training older than they said they were as border patrols are now investigating more strictly everyone who enters the country.

This season will occur without icons like Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn, and Mark McGwire. The three decided to hang up their spikes and ride off into the sunset at the end of last season. We will witness the end of the careers of Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines, two of the games best base runners ever, and the end of the coaching career of New York icon Mel Stottlemyre who decided he's had enough.

The season will provide new faces in new places. Jason Giambi enters the Big Apple as does Mo Vaughn, Jeromy Burnitz, Rondell White, and Robin Ventura. We will see David Justice invade the west coast and Moises Alou call Chicago his kind of town. Texas will try to adapt with the varying personalities of John Rocker, Carl Everett, and Juan Gonzalez. Seattle will welcome Shigetoshi Hasegawa to their already incredible bullpen, and Boston will add Johnny Damon and Tony Clark to their lineups in order to boost their offense. Other players in new uniforms will include Tino Martinez in St. Louis, Brad Fullmer in Anaheim, Gary Sheffield in Atlanta, Kenny Lofton and Todd Ritchie in Chicago, Rick Helling in Arizona, Hideo Nomo back in Los Angeles, and Jose Canseco and Andres Galarraga in Montreal.

The season promises much excitement despite no labor agreement. It will be interesting to see if perennial powerhouses, the Yankees, Braves, Diamondbacks, Mariners, Giants, and Mets, will be able to continue to dominate. It will also be fun watching some new teams inevitably overachieve, much like the Phillies, Athletics, and Cubs of recent years. Any way it is viewed, however, all will be well in a week when the two most wonderful words in all of sports are shouted, "Play Ball!"