Column: The Best Reason To Care About Baseball

Spring training is fully underway, and that means that the start of the baseball season will soon be upon us. While you might expect me to express my joy and anticipation for the new season, I'm going to be honest: I really don't care about the start of America's pastime.

For me, Major League Baseball has lost its luster. The season is too long, I live too far away to truly be able to follow my favorite team (the Houston Astros, long story), and I don't care enough about statistics and players to get worked up about a player failing six and a half times out of 10, instead of seven. Not to mention that the games take too long and, more often than not, are unwatchably boring unless one has a rooting interest in one of the teams.

Am I happy that I no longer care about one of the major American sports? Of course not. I'm a sports junky. I want to spend the entire summer wasting time trying to figure out who the best players and teams are, arguing about balls and strikes, and, in the process, destroying any chance I have at being able to carry out an engaging conversation with the fairer sex. If I can immerse myself in sports the rest of the year, why not summer as well? To achieve that aim, I've joined a fantasy baseball league.

At face value, it should be able to provide me incentive to begin to love everything that has driven me out of the sport. Who needs a vested rooting interest in a team when points are on the line every time Albert Pujols, Evan Longoria, and Ryan Howard come up to bat (gotta love having the No. 1 pick)? Who needs wins and losses when they only matter for my pitchers? Statistics are where it's at. You can keep the rest of the five-hour epics that constitute most baseball games. Gimme my batting averages, home runs, steals, strikeouts, and RBIs –  things I can find out by looking at the box score for three seconds.

And that is the flaw in the MLB. Listen to a 50-something year-old guy trying to explain his lifelong love of baseball, and what does he say? Rarely does he mention full seasons or teams; instead, it's all about players. He'll tell you he saw Hank Aaron in person, and that Mickey Mantle was the greatest all-around player he's ever seen. Teams are only brought into the conversation in rare instances, reserved for truly special groups like the '86 Mets.

People care about the players, statistics, and playoffs, not the 162-game marathon that is the season. Look at the big deal that was made about the Colts and the Saints chasing NFL perfection. Can you even name the team with the most wins in a season in MLB? Do you care? But if I ask who has the most home runs, longest hit streak, most consecutive games played, I'll bet you can tell me instantly.

The great irony of baseball is that the games get in the way of what we truly want to see: individual accomplishments. Sure, come playoff time, things change, but in the mindless slog that is the regular season, games don't matter. We don't even bring records into the conversation – it's only how many games a team is behind a wild card spot. By ignoring the games themselves, I am, in fact, coming closer to the true heart of the game of baseball.

Admittedly, there are a few flaws in my theory, the largest being that I have no idea how the fantasy baseball scoring system works (hoping that bigger equals better … and yes, I had to try to work in a steroids joke at some point, and this was the best spot). I know the biggest (literally) names in baseball, but I have no idea who the little guys are, the ones who will give me 50 steals and a decent batting average, but play in a small market and thus have no national hype.

Am I worried that both of these things will destroy any chance I have to win my league? A little. But I finally have a reason to care about baseball again, and that's all I need.