I'm a Pirates fan. I accept the fact that they may not even play .500 ball. I accept the fact that their Front Office seems to hire idiot after idiot that feels the need to trade talent to pay the bills rather than win championships. It's hard to be a Bucs fan.

Who's your favorite team, and what do you love/hate about them and where do you think they'll finish at the end of the season?

GO GIANTS!!!!!!!!!!! FEAR THE BEARD!!!!!!!

Baseball highlights is the only way to battle my insomnia

This is the best time of year for me. I love March Madness and I love baseball, so the fact that I get a huge awesome super exciting basketball tournament pretty much directly followed by Opening Day is amazing.

Having said that, being a Central IL person, my team is the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals.

I love going to the park and finding a strong crowd there any time I ever go. I love seeing the "sea of red" and being able to strike up conversations with most fans around me and realizing that most of them really do have more than just a casual understanding of the game (not all though, I remember hearing one lady rooting for a pop up to go "out of bounds"--a relatively amusing little moment that my wife and I mock quite often, probably making other people think we don't know what's going on either).

I love the toughness of players like Carpenter and Wainwright, the defensive excellent of Yadier Molina, and even the contributions of the now LA Angel Albert Pujols, who shared his greatness with the fans in St. Louis for 11 seasons.

I love the strategy of the NL game with sacrifice squeezes, hit and runs, and playing the outfield or infield in to cut off easy hits.

Now that I'm done waxing poetic, as far as where I think the Cardinals will finish, I think the NL Central will be a tight 3-way race, but on paper at least, I'd still favor my Cardinals, with the Reds having struggled last year (although they could bounce back) and the Brewers having lost one of their two big mashers in Prince Fielder. It wouldn't shock me if the Cardinals finish as low as 3rd though, if the Reds bounce back and other Brewers pick up some of Fielder's production.

Either way, I'm stoked for opening day, and I'm about to go order a bunch of tickets sometime soon.

N.Y.Y Always!!

for national league I always preferred St. Lou, from back in the Brock and Gibson days.

twain, u are in central illinois? me toooo, in the atlanta area, n between bloomington and lincoln

Fun stuff! I'm in Springfield.

So what's the most surprising/interesting so far?

The World Series teams starting off hot? (Texas and St. Louis both rockin' it)
The Washington Nationals looking like a real team? (1st place in the NL East by 2 games)
The Dodgers back from the grave of last year after getting new ownership? (1st place in NL West and currently tied for the best record in baseball)
The NL East as a whole? (Nat'ls in 1st, Philly and big-spending Miami tied for last)

The NL East as a whole is probably the most interesting to me. I wonder if the depth of that division is going to result in them getting 3 teams into the playoffs (with the new wild card rules) or whether they're just going to beat the crap out of each other and perhaps only get their division leader in. My best bet would be 2 teams get in from the NL East, but I could easily see a Central team sneaking in because the top three are very good, but the bottom three teams (Cubs, Pirates, Astros) are really bad teams and I think it's possible the only reason 1-2 of them break 70 wins is because they play each other so much and SOMEONE has to win those games.

I am not a NYY fan. The rest usually develops during the season.