It feels good to watch baseball again

The Pittsburgh Pirates may not be good.

After two losses to the St. Louis Cardinals, what we already knew has been brought into a slightly clearer focus.

The lineup is awful. The Pirates’ 6-9 hitters in today’s game all have a career OPS well under .700. Batting Adam Frazier third in any major league lineup should be a crime. When Colin Moran is the third-best hitter on your team, you have a real problem.

The starting pitching is not great. Joe Musgrove and Trevor Williams are viable major league starting pitchers, yes, but they aren’t close to being top of the rotation guys. Mitch Keller has the potential to be great but is still figuring things out. After him, you have Steven Brault and Derek Holland, who are both well below-average starters.

The bullpen is especially poor. I will say though, I liked what I saw from Clay Holmes on Opening Day. Nick Turley and Chris Stratton were solid today as well.

Anyways, I’m not here to pile on the Pirates. There are still 58 games of baseball left to be played.

I just wanted to express my joy that real-life baseball is being played. It felt good to watch. It felt good to hear Greg Brown and Bob Walk call a game. It felt good to get angry at the Pirates for blowing bases-loaded opportunities with less than two outs. It even felt good to watch Richard Rodriguez give up a game crippling home run. Also let’s give a shoutout to Pirates Twitter, who are already in midseason form with their takes.

To me, nothing beats sitting on the couch after a long day and watching the old ballgame. It’s a feeling of comfort and regularity, a feeling of normal.

Of course, watching a game with no fans is a weird experience and I still have that worry in the back of my mind that things will go wrong (you know, because of the pandemic).

But I have to say, it feels great to watch live sports again.