Is it actually possible to play the game of baseball with only a pitcher? Does defense truly win championships?

We’re about to find out.

Godspeed Roys, the faith of fifty hundreds or so of people is riding on your back. Hope you f**kers can hit.

The third finest day of the year. Maybe the fourth finest on years when St. Patrick’s Day is an honest hoolie.

I’ve only missed one Opening Day since 2005. In 2007 some gigantically evil bastard scheduled a massive work project requiring weeks of around the clock attention for the Opening Day weekend. I quit that job.

Now I’ve got the time and the inclination but neither Baltimore nor Philadelphia gets a home Opening Day. The Phillies, however, are opening in Washington, DC against the lowly Nationals. That shouldn’t be too hard to score tickets to, right? I mean, the Nats are worse than the friggin’ Orioles for chrissakes.

Well, you’d be wrong. I assume it’s all bandwagon Phillies fans. Every ticket is sold and the scalped ones are being sold at fantastic prices. I paid less for better tickets to the flag raising ceremony Opening Night in Philadelphia last year than nosebleeds in DC are going for now.

If that weren’t difficult enough to swallow I find out the President of the United States is attending the game to recreate the 100th anniversary of Grover Cleveland’s first pitch.

Now I’ve been to an Opening Day with the President in Cincinnati in 2006. It’s a right royal pain in the ass. There are metal detectors, snipers and an extended ceremony. Fair enough. I’d still go.

But honestly, our current President isn’t fit to carry Grover Cleveland’s jock. And I don’t want to share the same city or state with that jug-eared communist traitor. Let alone the same ballpark. Hell, the godamned guy plays basketball fer chrissakes. Why can’t he leave my game the hell alone?

Sod it. I can have more fun watching Red Sox Opening Night and Phillies Opening Day with a case of PBR and some pork rinds at home than I could being amongst Washingtonians and Constitution-shredding tyrants.

I’ll miss the sunshine.

It’s all good. Baseball is officially back.

It’s spring!

Up yours, you buck-toothed, Pennsylvanian underminer of foundations. Up yours, Al Gore and your global warmongering induced snowfall.

Up yours, winter.

Yesterday was Truck Day in Philadelphia and today is Truck Day in Boston.

Less than a week to go.

I have spent the better part of 36 hours trying to decide between suicide and homicide. Then merely veering between sheer despair and tentative hopefulness.

I feel like my dog died after running away with my girlfriend.

If it weren’t for the cosmic importance of this fight, I’d shrug and say, “Oh well, they are the Phillies.” Not this time.

Seriously, the one time in all of recorded human history when the entire family of man was cheering for the Philadelphia Phillies and they blew it. Way to go guys. You couldn’t even postpone failure for seven friggin minutes so it didn’t happen on my Dad’s birthday and the one-year anniversary of the Day the United States Died?

God’s intentions are always suspect. In this case, I suspect they are entirely focused on making 2009 the shittiest year in a long goddamn time. Perhaps it’s an issue of the “3″s. 2003 was a good and bad year. 2006 was a manifestly shitty year. 2009 has pretty much got them all beat – not for the pain of individual instances of despair – but for the horrendous summation of all the bad shit that’s gone down.

So prepare for the long, white season. Warmth and Light and Happiness have never seemed further away.

Except when considering this.

Awright, I’ll say it: Go Phils!

1. Let’s shitcan those towels. That’s a football thing. And worse, a Pittsburgh football thing. We can’t come up with our own goddamn traditions? Philly used to have some balls, whatever happened to the stadium courtroom?

2. Let’s shitcan all the World Champions 2008 gear. This ain’t 2008. This is a whole new ballgame. Let’s act like it. Wear your red with pride but stop living in the past. Look to the here and now. Look to the future.

And the future is bright.

Besides, you can’t let the Yankees win the World Series on my Dad’s birthday.

In Pedro we Trust.