So now it’s time for all of us happy-go-lucky bastards (like that grizzly barbituated sack of sad up there) that are blessed by Him to actually get to do this goddamn job to thaw our crusty old balls, pull up our stirrups, and pack a few extra liver pills. Tim to jog our sorry cans down to Florida or Arizona for the pageantry and splendor of Major League Baseball’s Spring Training. Time to put on a show for Mr. and Mrs. Retired Stockbroker, living large off of their fancy 401Ks and their fancy internet stocks, spinning their parasols and eating their sushi. Time to spend way too much effort with young guys that got too much spunk and not enough goddamn brains, wearing numbers on their backs that I can’t even count to anymore. Time to soothe damaged egos the size of Gibraltar and share air with crumb-covered beatoffs looking for something to exaggerate or fabricate. Time for endless days and nights that smell like the bottom of an Army latrine mixed with overpriced cologne and dirt-flavored ass sweat.

Excuse the hell out of me if I’m not exactly bustling with excitement to put myself through this goddamn three-knobbed circus again. Don’t mistake me – I love this goddamn game, and I’ll beat the spit out of anyone that intimates otherwise. But it’s also a thankless lump of a whore. Yeah, we’re the goddamn defending American League champions. That means as much as the turd I just left in a Friday’s restroom last week. It’s not like you get anything special for winning, other than some extra cash & a piece of junk trophy. What did winning the World Series get for Chicago? A lot of guff from the media when they failed to repeat, and more bloviating assflaps than a Chron’s Disease convention. Folks in New York feel the goddamn Series is their goddamn birthright, they’re so spoiled – a few years slumming in first place without The Ring, and they’re shredding millions of dollars to try and buy another ticket to the big stage. You ask me, I’d rather have baseball happen all year, just so all the hot-stove garbage about winning or losing the World Series would up and die quicker (like that joke of a Bears team during the “Super”bowl).

But we don’t, and it won’t, so whatever. I know exactly what you turkeys in the media are going to ask me, all you jacked-up self-satisfied clowns in print and TV and the internet, rubbing your press passes with your greasy chicken mitts. To save you folks some time in the buffet like, and instead of having poor old Gene deal with your remedial pud-jacking, I’m going to answer every goddamn question you could ever think of, and some you’re too stupid to think of, right here. By the way, you’re welcome. But if you want to really thank me, buy me some Mylanta, a carton of Luckys, and leave me the hell alone.

First of all, regarding a serious focus on Pitcher’s Fielding Practice in light of last year’s World Series – ha ha goddamn ha. You should save those sorts of laughs for a sitcom or a Friar’s Club meeting. There’s going to be no more attention paid to PFP as their is to any other aspect of the goddamn game, be it RBI, HR, BB, GIDP, BABIP, or STFU. Each aspect of baseball is just as important as anything else – you can’t just hit a bunch of homeruns, or just keep the other team from scoring. You have to be able to do everything well all the time, or else you should just set up kegs at every base and hire the high school custodian as your umpire.

That is, you work at doing everything well if you want to be regarded and respected a true champion. As if there’s anything else worth a damn in this dogcrap world. Sure, you can get away with neglecting some aspect of your game and still win, if the other team lets you – see one goddamn St. Louis Cardinals team, for instance. If you think a team with Jeff Weaver and Anthony Reyes pitching, or a Molina brother doing anything besides fetching scorebook pencils, should be able to win any damn thing, let alone the goddamn World Series, then allow me to sell you the hair off my nice and toasty balls for one million dollars. If the Tigers could actually hit and pitch and field as well as we had for only 170 or so games prior to that 5-game debacle, then I’d have another horse-ugly ring I could lose in the toilet.

You’ll also want to know about Sheffield, won’t you? Gonna probably say something stupid about how he’s a troublemaker wherever he goes. Well, let me tell you about troublemakers – if they can swing the bat worth a goddamn, then they can switch my Ben-Gay with Nair, and I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass. You’re telling me you wouldn’t want a Reggie Jackson, or an Albert Belle, or a goddamn Ty Cobb on your team? What the hell do you know? Sheffield’s a goddamn beast, with a swing that could chop the head off a pro wrestler at 50 yards. You stand next to the batting cage when he’s taking rips, it switches from hot to cool real quick. If we had him last year, I guaran-goddamn-tee that we’d beat the snot out of those pitcher-hitting sissies going away. And don’t get smart with me, with your “he was hurt last year” claptrap – I know what I know, and I know that Sheffield’s going to get us over the goddamn hump. Kids can only take you so far before they need a nap and a goddamn binky. With men like Sheffield and Casey on our team for an entire year, you can keep the binkys in your stylish little satin-lined diamond-studded diaper bag with the rest of the goddamn kids’ crap.

And what about Jamie Walker, you’re gonna ask? How’s your bullpen gonna get over losing such a “key component” or “stalwart performer” or “linchpin” or some other cockamamie pseudo-intellectual turn of phrase? Fact is, we don’t need no goddamn Jamie Walker. He pitched about 48 innings last year – that’s about a quarter of the innings an average starter gives you. Kenny Rogers falls out of bed and gives you that in one month. You want to pay four million a year for a part time player to get one out every other game, be my goddamn guest. I don’t want “specialists” on this team. I don’t want trumped-up waterboys that show up for one out and hit the showers like they worked up a sweat. There are twenty-seven outs to get in every baseball game, and wasting one guy to get one out does me no goddamn good.

It kills me every goddamn time I have to use a guy like that. That one and done namby-pamby crap makes pretty boys like LaRussa look all smart and sophisticated, but any monkey with two arms and working legs knows when to pull a one-and-done turkey. Look at my face on your fancy big-screen plasma laser-shooting HiDef TV the next time I yank a kid after facing one guy. You’ll think I just saw Kurt Abbott pop up to short. Again. You give me gamers and hard-nosed guys that can pitch themselves out of trouble – you give me some goddamn baseball players – and I’ll give you a pitching staff so sweet it’ll rot your teeth just to look at their stats. No offense to good kids like Bonderman and Verlander, but if I had a staff of Todd Joneses grunting and sweating for me every goddamn day, I’d probably be that much less of a miserable bastard.

But this is just the start. There’s another eight months of this bullcrap to put up with. Groin pulls, losing streaks, interleague play, that asshat in Tampa Bay that will not shut the hell up – it’s a goddamn Bataan death march. It takes a real warrior, an athlete with stones in his belly and his head, to suck it up through the ups and downs of a baseball season. Right now, during Spring Training, is the most important time of the season, when we separate the chumps from the guys that will be standing come this October. Every year I think it’s my last, but every year I come back, because I’m going to beat you but good this time. Do your worst, you son of a bitch – I’m coming for you.

Happy goddamn Valentine’s Day.