OSU BB: Christmas for Adults

Tomorrow [Wednesday, as of when I wrote this] will be opening day at Bill Davis Stadium for the Ohio State Buckeyes. After winning their season opener, the Buckeyes dropped three straight but have since run off a dozen straight wins to enter the portion of the schedule that is played anywhere remotely close to Ohio at 13-3. While the competition was not very tough (Boyd Nation ranks their strength of schedule at 154, lowest in the Big Ten), it’s tough to do a whole lot better then 13-3, and the Buckeyes are 65th in the RPI and 43rd in Nation’s ISR. According to Baseball America, the Big Ten may get an at-large bid this year, and OSU would be in contention for that spot. So the Buckeyes certainly have a lot to play for besides the quest for the B10 regular season crown.

Tomorrow the opponent will be Toledo, with whom the Bucks have opened the home campaign each of the last two seasons. Then it will be a weekend series to open B10 play with Iowa, which is terribly timed for the OSU faithful, as many, the author included, will find it hard to focus on baseball on Saturday. That’s a good thing though. A bad thing is that there are thunderstorms predicted for tomorrow and an 80% chance of rain.

But Opening Day, no matter what level of the game you are at, is special. And so like a kid on Christmas Eve, I will be excited as I drift off to sleep tonight, thinking about putting on a ballcap and getting out the trusty old scorebook, skipping class and heading off to the ballpark. For all of the rationalistic and probabilistic and scientific trappings of this blog, that feeling is what makes baseball the beautiful thing that it is. Let there be baseball.