Full disclosure: this is approximately the third or fourth blog I’ve started, not counting the various LiveJournal/Xanga-type online “diaries” that inexplicably exploded in popularity among members of my generation in the early years of this young century. I had a few of those, too, and the juvenile expressions of wannabe frustration, anger, and self-loathing contained within are so embarrassing to even think about these days that I’m glad to be done with them.

In terms of my blogs, they’ve mostly veered toward the political, which makes sense; I’ve been a political junkie since my teens, as an undergraduate I studied what most universities call Political Science, and I’ve worked on several political campaigns, mostly in a volunteering, licking-stamps, knocking-on-doors, hi-how-are-you-have-you-heard-about-the-upcoming-State-Assembly-election sort of way. But those blogs fell by the wayside, too. Reviving any of them would probably be inappropriate at this point, since I work for the legislative office of an official entity of the California government, which requires me to at least maintain the appearance of objectivity in State political matters.

And so we come to this blog, which is to be about baseball - the national pastime, they call it, although growing up my family members only liked football, my friends seemed to all be into basketball, and all the rage in the wide world of sports these past couple of decades seemed to be about soccer (don’t ask me why; I prefer sports where teams actually, you know, score points). But baseball is my sport, for better or worse. I can’t necessarily explain it in the most eloquent of manners - although, on this blog, you will certainly see me try to do so - I just happen to like it more than any other sport. I like watching it on television, I like listening to it on the radio, I like seeing it played in person, I like talking about it with fellow baseball fans (and a few unlucky not-so-fans who happen to be within earshot when I start running my big mouth), so why not write about it?

Another tidbit I feel compelled to disclose early: I am, relatively speaking, a new fan to the world of baseball. It has probably always been my favorite sport, but for most of my life, saying that I liked baseball more than any other sport would have been like George W. Bush bragging that he was more successful at drilling oil than at any other enterprise he was involved in. I wasn’t much of a sports kid growing up - I was a Batman kid, a video games kid, a Star Trek kid, a movie buff, and a big reader. I watched sports very rarely, and played them even less often; I’m pretty sure I never even owned a bat or a baseball glove.

And yet, here I am, writing a blog about baseball, because it is what I love. Part of the reason I love baseball so much is that it doesn’t really matter when you start loving it. At the beginning of Ken Burns’s excellent documentary Baseball: The Tenth Inning, Keith Olbermann says of baseball, “If you come in at the beginning of a game, or at the start of the season, or at the start of your own fandom, you feel as if you are joining the river midstream, and all that has gone before, you can enjoy as much as if you were there.”

I agree with Keith, and with that, I begin my journey through a single season (and, if the one season is something I enjoy doing, even more) as a baseball blogger. I will be going to, watching, and listening to games all the way from the college level up to the major leagues, and putting my thoughts about them here. I’m a Giants fan, at heart, but here you will read about my musings on not just the Giants but other major league contenders (including the Orange and Black’s friendly crossbay rival, and potentially serious division contender, the Oakland Athletics), minor league baseball’s Sacramento River Cats, and much else. If you like it, stick around, and feel free to add your own comments. If you don’t like it, well, I’ve got good news for you - the internet has something for just about everyone to enjoy, so hopefully there’s something out there for you.

Coming soon (as in, within the hour): a preview of the San Francisco Giants’s opening game and 2011 season, and what the Giants mean to me.