Spring is Here!!

I love spring. The weather gets warmer, flowers start to bloom, girls come out of the woodwork showing more skin. All good things. But the best part about spring? All the fucking sports! You get basketball playoffs, hockey playoffs, and the start of baseball season. This is literally a sports lover's paradise.
The start of baseball season always brings about new hope. Every fan believes that their team has a chance; that this'll finally be their year. I'm by no means the biggest baseball fan, but there's definitely something awesome about the start of the season. More than mere hope, it's also a time of eternal youth. Even the oldest among us can remember the first baseball game they went to. We can remember going into the stadium, which seemed so menacingly big at the time, we can hear the crowd cheering and groaning, and see ourselves looking at the players who looked like tiny little bugs so far below us. More than football or basketball, baseball has that timeless quality. It's not as exciting as basketball, as fast as hockey, or as hard-hitting as football, but baseball's always been that little slice of Americana that lets us know that the cold, hard winter is over and the breezy spring months, followed by summer days spent lounging on a chair, will soon be upon us. Baseball season means beaches, spring break and vacations. It means fishing trips, kids running around, and girls in bikinis. Baseball's the perfect background noise as the days get longer and the air gets warmer. And the first few weeks, when every team is still technically in it, and we get to scrutinize and analyze our team's off-season changes, and determine what veterans are done, and what young players are ready to take it to the next level, and ultimately decide whether it'll be worth our time to follow the team for the next five months or not (regardless of what we decide, we'll still follow the team for the next five months)....... well, those first few weeks are just stupendous.
Basketball playoff games are always a treat to watch. You get ballers at the top of their profession playing at ridiculous levels. The NBA post-season is nothing like the regular season. The intensity is taken to a different stratosphere entirely. Now I meant to write about the playoffs before the games started, but, well, I didn't. So let me go on the record now saying I think the Sixers can beat this Pistons team. We already took game one on their home court. We're younger and more athletic, and honestly, I think we're just hungrier.
Regardless of whether the Sixers were in or not, I'd still be uber-excited for these playoffs. I can't remember this many good teams and match-ups in my life. This should really be its own post, so we'll do that later.
That brings us to the NHL playoffs. Regular season and post-season hockey are, simply put, not the same sport. Post-season crowds are more raucous, the games are more physical, the skating is faster, the goaltending is at a higher level, and the shots just seem to be traveling faster. My Flyers rebounded from the worst season in team history to make the playoffs this year. If that wasn't exciting enough, we got matched up with the Washington Capitals in the first round. The Caps, of course, have Alexander Ovechkin, who evidently has been named the new "king of hockey" by the national hockey league. Well you know what? No one fucking told Philadelphia! Everyone picked the Caps to beat us even though we had more points than them in the regular season, we have a better, more proven goaltender, and we're a more balanced team. Everyone on ESPN just loooooves Ovechkin so much. Well you know what Barry Melrose.... you can go suck his Russian cock., cause tonight the Flyers beat the fucking Capitals. Yeah, it took an overtime period in game 7, but still. We get to play the Canadiens in the next round, and though I may not get to see a game cause I don't get whatever the fuck this VS. channel is (way to get a good TV contract NHL... really, you did a great job there), I'm still ridiculously excited. There is NOTHING quite as nerve-racking as an overtime hockey game where the first goal wins the game, and there is nothing quite like playoff hockey. If the NHL regular season was anything at all like the playoffs, the league would certainly have more fans. It's hard to explain the thrill of seeing your teams back in the playoffs, and succeeding, after they've been down in the doldrums for the pat few seasons. Do I expect either the Flyers or Sixers to actually win a title? No, not really. We're just not good enough... yet. But then again, the uncertainty is what makes the playoffs so damn exciting in the first place. I may need to start downing pills just to make sure my enthusiasm doesn't the best of me.
Sooo I got the start of the season for a Phillies team with an extremely potent offense, I got my basketball team getting the NBA's attention by giving those cocky-ass Pistons all they can handle, and I got my hockey team beating the NHL's new golden boy to advance to the next round in the playoffs. You know what, I could get used to this. This is gonna be a good few weeks. I fucking love spring.