The Super Bowl is over and winter is slowly (hopefully) turning into spring. That means it's almost baseball season, with some pitchers and catchers reporting in as little as three days. Here are 10 reasons to be excited.
Getting excited for Baseball
Masahiro Tanaka pitching in New York City. His decision to sign/not sign/change his Twitter avatar took the baseball world by storm this winter. It'll be interesting to see how the 25-year-old handles the spotlight of Yankee Stadium, or if he scraps everything and auditions for "Dancing with the Stars:"
Beards. Although your mom may hate them, they're a crucial component to being a successful baseball player. Just look at All-Star Brian Wilson, Jayson Werth and the 2013 World Series-winning Red Sox:
The weather has been so poor this year that four or five Major League Baseball games are postponed or canceled each day. Don't let the bad weather discourage your children, though, because their ball season is right around the corner and it's time to start getting excited about playing America's favorite sport.
Over 36 million kids across the United States play organized sports each year and baseball is one of the most popular. Unfortunately, with the MLB season off to a slow start due to consistent weather issues, the majority of American children aren't exactly excited about taking the field and playing ball once again. That's where you come in as a parent.
It's your job to get your kids fired up about baseball so they can have the most fun on the field as possible. Here are some excellent tips for getting your children pumped up about playing baseball once again:
With a seating capacity of more than 37,000, Fenway Park plays host to baseball fans, concert-goers, the NHL Winter Classic, and even Big Air ski and snowboarding events. Guided tours of Fenway take place daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. excluding game days, when the last tour ends 3 hours prior to the first pitch.
The St. Louis Cardinals have one of the most sought-after tickets in the league. The Redbird nation proves every year to be one of the most dedicated fan bases in baseball. What the stadium lacks in modern frills and entertainment, is made up by the intense energy of Cardinal fans.
While baseball giants like Sandy Koufax, Don Sutton, Orel Hershiser, and Mike Piazza have all called Dodger Stadium their home, this park has also hosted several big names outside of baseball. Transformers, Rock of Ages, and Fast and Furious all filmed scenes at the stadium, and so did several other Hollywood productions.
2Dsports Youth Baseball (2DYB) hosted 16 youth baseball tournaments in Louisiana during the Summer 2020 youth travel baseball season as well as hosting the inaugural Fall Conference Series in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Hammond, Louisiana .
Many of these youth baseball tournaments, including the 2020 World Series and Fall Conference Series, featured full Player Coverage & awarded championship rings! A successful 2020 youth travel baseball tournament season is propelling us to an even bigger and better 2021 youth baseball season!
2DYB will be hosting 60+ youth travel baseball tournaments in four different states during the 2021 Spring & Summer Youth Baseball Tournament Season! These events are spotlighted by the 2021 World Series at Broussard Sports Complex as well as the National Championship at PCB Sports Complex. These 2 youth baseball tournaments are both Powered by Marucci & will feature a Skills Competition. Also, our expanded 2D Select Series will showcase some of the top youth talent across the state, and our Jr. Scout Games will feature top youth travel baseball teams across the nation. 2DYB is building to an even bigger and better year than before.
Broussard, Live Oak, Zachary, Sterlington, Crowley, Hammond America, Ruston, Lake Charles. What do these all have in common? ALL TURF venues! Great facilities, great atmosphere, great youth travel baseball tournaments in Louisiana. But wait: TN, FL, MS! Are you ready? More events, more venues, Our Best Baseball Yet! 2DYB is ready for a BIG 2021 Youth Travel Baseball Tournament Season!
2DYB is proud to present the inaugural year of Rankings! These rankings will promote competition within age divisions of teams who play in 2DYB travel baseball tournaments. The bigger the events - the more points up for grabs! World Series and National Championship Champions and Runner-Ups receive 500 points & 250 points, respectively. State Championship 400 & 200 points, respectively. Each team will also receive 10 points per win and 5 points per tie. Playing up in divisions also adds bonus points per win!
2DYB is bringing back the Select Series - a premium youth baseball Elite Event Series (Invite-Only). All events will feature event coverage, great umpires, elite competition, turf fields, rankings, standings, end of the year awards, player stats, and more! Teams will compete for Select Series Championships and an overall youth state tournament exclusive to the conference teams. The Select Series consists of 6 events from the end of February through May. Teams will expect to play elite competition all Spring in competitive matchups at some of the top venues across Louisiana.
The Inaugural 2DYB National Championship Powered by Marucci will be played at the NEW All-Turf Panama City Beach Sports Complex. This youth baseball tournament is a 5-game guaranteed event and will feature a Skills Competition on June 9, followed by tournament play beginning on June 10. The Champions and Finalists in each age division will receive National Championship/Finalists Rings. The National Championship will also feature social media coverage.
The success seen of the Scout Games amateur baseball tournaments by 2Dsports will be incorporated into the youth level by 2DYB. These 13u & 14u invite-only, elite-model scouted baseball tournaments will feature top youth teams across the nation. Tournaments will be played at all-turf venues and will feature full social media coverage, live player stats on GameChanger, Player(s) of the Game, and covered by college coaches & scouts across the nation.
Returning to action for the first time since the pandemic interrupted their 2020 season midway through, the App State baseball team began its 2021 by winning two of three on the road against Winthrop on Saturday and Sunday.
On Sunday, the Denver Broncos defeated the Carolina Panthers 24-10 in Super Bowl 50. The game included dancing monkey dog babies, Beyonce defying gravity, and Von Miller eating Cam Newton for breakfast, but by far the most important takeaway is that baseball is just around the corner.
Baseball makes me deliriously happy. Baseball, with standings and leaderboards and the whole deal, nourishes my soul. If following baseball won't make you happy, please do something that will instead. Nobody wants you to be unhappy. But if baseball offers even the potential to make you happy, I want to help you get there.
You don't like baseball, though? Don't give up. I hated onions for decades, but a number of caring people taught me how to cut them, how to cook them, what to cook them in and what function they serve, and now onions make me happy almost every single day. Not every great joy comes as easily as a mother's love or a satisfying sneeze, and any number of my favorite things -- Prince, The New Yorker, Saturdays with the internet turned off -- are loves that developed only because somebody explained to me how to do so.
How to watch baseball: Don't watch baseballIt's intimidating to start consuming something that will take up a lot of your time. I don't watch "Doctor Who," not because I'm afraid I won't like it but because I'm afraid I will. Who has the time to like a show with 827 episodes? The thing that makes something special -- its bottomlessness -- becomes a burden, becomes a flaw.
Baseball is a beautiful sport, a joy to watch on television. But every baseball team plays 162 games a year, and every one of them is long. I don't imagine you, a person who at the moment merely tolerates the game, are eager to sit on a couch and stare at a TV screen for 500 extra hours a year. Five hundred hours! That's long enough to organize your junk drawer, bake cookies and take 498 naps. That is long enough to seriously affect your health.
The good news is that you can follow baseball without spending 500 hours stationary in front of a television, because baseball -- with its seasonal omnipresence -- was never required to be a television sport. Back before every game was televised, only a couple dozen road games would be televised in most markets. And before that, there was no television at all. There was just Vin Scully or Ernie Harwell on the radio, filling the air around our most boring moments. Baseball on the radio takes baseball's burden, its flaw -- the bottomlessness -- and turns it back into something special. It is entertainment while you weed, while you stare at the brake lights in front of you, while you do dishes, while you take a walk, while you paint a room, while you stand in line, while you sit on a porch and stare off into the twilight after a bad day and try to remember how hopeful tomorrow is. It is a podcast that comes out every day, stretches for hours and has, as a bonus, a pregame podcast and a postgame podcast.
If you find a friend in baseball on the radio, you will never feel lonely again. And this, really, is the best part of baseball on the radio: It turns all your unpleasant activities into opportunities to listen to baseball. The great burden of living a life -- of managing thousands of tasks, demands and delays -- becomes a theater for your enjoyment of the sport. It's like a pilot fish, harmlessly following you through your life and eating the parasites that accumulate on your belly. And like pilot fish, it is said by many to be quite tasty.
What to watch when you do watch: the catcher's mittThere are people who like to consume the entirety of a thing, but I find that my happiness is increased by compartmentalizing a performance and focusing on one small, crucial aspect of it. I like to focus on the cuts in a movie, on the internal rhymes in a rap song, on the umami in a savory dish. When I watch baseball on TV, I like to focus on the catcher's mitt. 2ff7e9595c
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