On the verge of Opening Day, starving for story lines

Every night, I get home from work and eat dinner. I come back into my room, change into more comfortable clothes, maybe grab a snack, start channel surfing…the usual. Then, when 9:30-10 rolls around, I realize that I have to write my article for my adoring audience. Sad as this may seem, it’s, in some ways, one of the best parts of my day. Writing is something I’ve had a love and passion for since high school and combining that with my life long love and passion for baseball is a pleasure every single day. As this offseason has worn on, though, this wonderful routine has started to get a little stale for me. For whatever reason, I can’t recall my writing process last offseason. Maybe that’s because a year ago, I was mired in student teaching and probably wasn’t writing as much. But for whatever reason, it just seems like the 2011-2012 Hot Stove Season has lasted longer than others. For whatever reason, writing has been harder and harder with almost each passing night. My frustration with this self-fulfilling reality is easy to trace. I write just about every weekday, and the baseball season has been over since November. To say I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for topics would be an extreme understatement. If I’m being perfectly honest with myself, too, I’ve seen a deterioration in the quality of my writing, and for that I apologize. But, before I go any farther, I want to thank you all for sticking with TYA and me through this (seemingly) remarkably long offseason.

Obviously, we couldn’t do any of this without you and I know I speak for the entire TYA staff when I say we appreciate it more than you’ll ever know. When we get to talking about blogging, MJR always notes that writing this blog is a labor of love, and he’s absolutely right. We’re all here writing because we love it, we love baseball, and we love providing you all with the very best we can. We’ve got a great season of baseball ahead of us and we cannot wait to hit the ground running and continue to provide you with the high quality content you come back for each and every day.

Returning to my original point, at this point in Spring Training, with a team as complete as this Yankees team seems to be, there just isn’t that much to write about. Even the possible story lines out there haven’t been much to run with. Today, Freddy Garcia was hit with a line drive, but the x-rays were negative. David Robertson was banged up last week, but that seems over and he should be fine. Some are trying to drum up drama in the Michael Pineda department, but I’m not going to dignify them with links (check back later for more Pineda talk from Mike E). As we get closer and closer to Opening Day, I’m getting hungrier and hungrier for real story lines.

As you read this, we’ll be just 18 days from the Yankees’ first regular season game of the 2012 season and we’ll have real things to sink our teeth into. We’ll have real processes and results to analyze. We’ll have real games to talk about. Baseball is a game rooted in anticipation rather than in instant gratification and that’s one of the things I love about it. At this point, though, I’m ready for some gratification. I want some gratification. I need some gratification. Help me, Opening Day; you’re my only hope.

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