I like the World Baseball Classic as much (actually probably a lot more) than the average fan.  But it still doesn’t make any sense to me that spring training has to be longer because of it.  Shouldn’t it be the same size, or even shorter given that those players should have been in shape even earlier to get ready to play in it?

Regardless, spring training, which has always been two weeks too long to begin with is almost four weeks too long this year.  Just to fuck with us, they even moved Daylight Savings Time up.  So here we are still almost a full month from opening day and doesn’t it seem like they’ve been in camp for a month already?

The Cubs have a set lineup, so the media is busy trying to make up postion “battles” to amuse us.

As if we’re all on the edge of our seat wondering who’s going to start at second (Mike Fontenot unless he falls down a well, baby Jessica style), and who is going to be the fifth starter (Sean Marshall unless Jake Peavy shows up).

The worst at this is our little albino friend at the Sun-Times.  Even on his best days he’s a clueless hack, but when he’s bad, he’s an even more douchy version of Phil Rogers.  Take a moment to consider how unctuous that is.

The Cubs and White Sox are so fired up about spring training that last week they decided to fly to Vegas and play a couple of games.  Basically, if you have an oversized check and are willing to throw enough zeroes on it, a Major League team or two will ditch their schedule and fly to your town.

Next year the Mariners are going to Mystery, Alaska to take on Skank and the boys for $1,000 cash and one of Burt Reynolds’ white toupees.

But that’s kind of the point, after all.  The players are bored.  The fans are bored.  Hell, even the writers are bored.  Check out this photo from the first day of Spring Training.

Just like when they were kids in high school, Bruce takes copious notes, while Paul hangs out behind him, pretty much assuming everything the “man” is telling them is bullshit.

So what are we supposed to entertain ourselves with until April when things at least start to get serious?

Well, the World Baseball Classic is pretty cool.  I know that a whole shitload of big-name players begged out of it, but still a lot of them are playing in it.  Hell, Hank White even ditched his first spring training with the Padres where he should be learning how to sit in their bench to sit on Team Venezuela’s bench.  I’m not even sure the Padres know he’s gone.

The Cubs have three players in the classic this year.  Geovany Soto is catching for Puerto Rico, Carlos Marmol is closing for the Dominican and Ted Lilly is plotting an international killing spree for Team USA.

When those three are playing you just hope that they don’t get hurt.  When anybody else is playing you hope they do get hurt.  It’s like watching a NASCAR pile-up, you just want your driver’s car to come through the smoke rolling on all four tires.

Saturday’s USA-Canada game was pretty damn cool.  They played it in SkyDome (Rogers Center, whatever) which is best known as the place where Joe Carter won a World Series with a home run, and where Roberto Alomar tried to give an umpire AIDS.  The place was packed with almost 45,000 fans, about 40,000 of them Canadians who actually put hockey season on hold for a few hours.  Team USA won, despite some shitty managing by Davey Johnson (when you see him in the dugout you expect to see him leaning on the bat rack with a vodka gimlet).  Two bits of important information for you, Dave.  Chipper Jones looks like he has no plans to hit a baseball fair until May and unless you have a time machine set for 1998, Jimmy Rollins gets to play all nine instead of sharing short with Derek Jeter.

The announcing has been awful, too.  Dave O’Brien and Rick Sutcliffe are doing the games in Canada, and the MLB 2K9 crew of Gary Thorne and Steve Phillips are in San Juan.  We can only hope the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt charges into their hotel lobby and smites them before they can fly back to the mainland.

Thorne was behind the mic for the biggest upset in international baseball history when the Netherlands beat the Dominican Republic on Saturday.  He so thoroughly botched the call of the final out (the batter struck out on a hit and run, but Thorne missed the umpire’s call–which was pretty quick and very obvious–and thought the Nederlanders had run onto the field for no apparent reason), that I honestly wondered it was like ESPN’s World Cup coverage and he and Phillps were just sitting in a studio in Bristol.

Because I’ve been playing 2K9 whenever I get a chance this week, listening to them on Saturday, I reflexively kept hitting “A” hoping to shut them up.

I cannot emphasize how happy I am that Sutcliffe, a Cubs legend and all-around good guy, is healthy and looking good.  Because he’s back to 100 percent, I can without guilt rip him for being a completely shitty announcer.  He’s useless.  No, he’s worse than useless.  Good color announcers add to your enjoyment of the game, mediocre color announcers are just kind of background noise.  Shitty color announcers ruin your enjoyment of the game.  You’re in that final group, Sut.

You wonder sometimes when you listen to a shitty color commentator how someone who was so good at a game could know so little about it.  That’s exactly the feeling you get when Sutcliffe is announcing.  It is as though every overly simplistic thing Joe Morgan has ever uttered about the game has been copiously written down by Sutcliffe and spat back out during broadcasts.  For a pitcher who got by on guile for the second half of his career, he offers no insight into the “art” of pitching.  It’s as though he’s an infant and radar gun readings are dangling off a mobile over his crib, he’s just fascinated by them.

As I write this, Sutcliffe is redeeming himself by absolutely ripping Davey Johnson for taking Jimmy Rollins (3-3 on the day) out in the bottom of the fifth so Jeter can play the second half of the game.  Sutcliffe just said, “Are you trying to win, or keep the players happy?”  Because he’s so completely right about that, I’m going to stop ripping on him.

But man, I wish he would stop acting like having a decent batting average automatically means you are a great player.  I digress…

I do have one last thing you can do to amuse yourself during March.  Other than the NCAA Tournament, which goes without saying.

Last Sunday I woke up, turned on ESPN and saw that it was The Sports Reporters, one of the worst shows on TV.  When I saw that the two worst panelists on that show, ever, Mitch Albom and Mike Lupica were on, I almost threw the remote through the TV in my haste to change the channel.  But before I could change it, I was transfixed by something, and I ended up watching the entire 30 minute show.

The way the “set” is set-up, there are four overstuffed chairs with wooden arms set up with two in the middle and the ones on each end angled outwards a little bit.  On Sunday’s panel, Howard Bryant and John Saunders sat in the middle with Lupica and Albom on the ends.  At first I thought it was some TV trickery that allowed Albom to look as though he was nearly as tall as the average-sized Bryant.  But upon closer inspection, Albom’s chair was clearly placed on a podium of some sort.

Once you noticed it was impossible not to.  Because the arms on Albom’s chair were a good four or five inches higher than the arms on Bryant’s chair.  They had to make the equivalent of an adult high-chair for him.

This morning, Selena Roberts sat in the same chair, and the arms were at precisely the same height as Bob Ryan’s chair right next to her.

Can you imagine the hissy fit temper tantrum Albom must have thrown on some previous appearance that actually motivated Valerio Productions to build a little platform to put Little Lord Mitchelroy’s chair on?

Now, if they can come up with a better way of hiding his enormous donkey ears.