Baseball Is Back
Baseball's quarter-billion dollar shortstop, Alex Rodriguez of the Texas Rangers, debuted with a throwing error, some slips and slides, and a run scored in his team's lopsided loss to the Toronto Blue Jays Sunday as baseball started a new season.
The Canadian team, now 1-0, was listed as the official home team in San Juan, Puerto Rico. With a powerful lineup and a few young arms, the Blue Jays are hoping to make things uncomfortable for the talent-laden New York Yankees, baseball's reigning champions.
It was the third successive season that baseball has opened outside the U.S. The San Diego Padres and Colorado Rockies opened the 1999 campaign in Monterrey, Mexico, and the New York Mets and Chicago Cubs played two games in Tokyo last year.
Across the U.S. Monday, the national pastime gets under way. The Yankees host the Kansas City Royals in the Bronx. The Bronx Bombers, complete with baseball's most expensive lineup, are taking aim at a fourth straight World Series. Yet even after adding Mike Mussina, one of the game's finest pitchers, the Yankees are not taking anything for granted.
"When it comes down to it, there's only one day a year when we allow ourselves to get giddy - the parade," said Bernie Williams, the Yankees' talented yet reliably low-key center fielder.
On Tuesday, the National League champion Mets take the field in Atlanta against the Braves, their arch-rivals.
The joy of a new season was tempered for both the Yankees and the Mets by the ongoing drama surrounding Darryl Strawberry, the slugger once thought to have Hall-of-Fame potential who is fighting an epic battle with drugs and alcohol.
 Inside the storied confines of Yankee stadium, a 26th World Championship banner will hang from the rafters this year (AP)SIZE> |
At Baltimore's Camden Yards, Pedro Martinez and the Boston Red Sox were excited to welcome Manny Ramirez to their lineup. They'll face the lowly Baltimore Orioles, a team in a major rebuilding phase.
At Jacobs Field, one of the game's quirkiest characters, David Wells, got ready to pitch in a new uniform. Wells, now with the Chicago White Sox - a team with playoff aspirations of its own - hopes to take advantage of a new, expanded strike zone, which umpires say will speed up the game this year.
Baseball's two new stadiums, PNC Park in Pittsburgh and Miller Park in Milwaukee will hold their first regular season games within a week.
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