Classic Rant #846 (November 15, 2012): Baseball, Anyone?

In the midst of all of this hurricane stuff, sports remains as one of our personal outlets for our frustrations.

Sure, sports fans do live through their teams and individual players, but in the middle of the rubble, it is almost comforting to know that sports are right there for us ...

That is, unless you are a hockey fan. The National Hockey League lockout continues, with no end in sight.

On other fronts, football and basketball are in full swing, and on my end, the Knicks look real good. Is it a mirage or is their 5-0 start--including one victory that my son and I saw in person--the real thing?

And then we go onto baseball, our national pastime.

Yes, lots of baseball news in November.

If you like trades, the Jose Reyes trade from the Marlins to the Blue Jays is a blockbuster, once again totally depleting the Miami team and fortifying the Toronto team, making them contenders with just about every other team in that division (except the Red Sox).

And to make matters even more interesting, the leagues announced their respective Cy Young Award winners yesterday, signifying that these two pitchers were the best at what they did last season.

David Price of the Rays won in the American League, and R.A. Dickey of the Mets won in the National League.

No real surprises here. Price and Dickey dominated their leagues, even though neither team they pitched for made the playoffs.

In fact, the Mets were so bad last year--only prevented from ending up in last place in their division by the totally awful and now dismantled Marlins--that Dickey was probably the one and only bright spot they had last year.

And the two pitchers couldn't be different.

Price is a sleek, classic pitcher with an assortment of nasty pitches. He throws hard.

Dickey, once a pitcher to kick around, throws just about one pitch now, and he throws soft.

He throws a knuckleball.

Not too many knuckleballers are successful, and not too many win the Cy Young Award.

None did before Dickey, but Dickey was so dominant most of the time, that voters simply could not ignore him.

So right in the middle of November, with frost on the cars that survived Hurricane Sandy, the focus is on baseball.

Incredible!

The national pastime lives on and on and on.

No matter how many ignorant people knock it, it stands as the only 12-month-a-year sport.

And I love it, I really do.