How Long Before Opening Day?

I don't know if it's the arctic weather or what, but something about this past week has gotten me ready for baseball season. Just like all of you B&E readers!

The Mets have found themselves in a world of hurt over the design of their inaugural season patch. It's so bad that it even made an appearance on the Colbert Report. As good as Stephen's report is, I have to say I'm somewhat partial to this presentation of the logo's runners-up.

Balancing my lack of enthusiasm for the new uniform patch (which follows the design vocabulary of the Citigroup brand - a little marketing lingo for you on B&E!) is this little Playstation3 video of the Mets new stadium (CitiField, a.k.a. Bailout Ballfield, a.k.a. Barack Obama Park). It all goes by pretty quickly (stupid hip MTV editing), but I have to say that I'm pretty excited to see a Mets game in a real baseball-appropriate stadium.

And I rather liked the industrial dump that was Shea Stadium. Now that it's being demolished, of course, it's really an industrial dump.

Speaking of Barack Obama Park, the Mets single-A independently affiliated Brooklyn Cyclones know a thing or two about their demographic. For one day, they will become the Baracklyn Cyclones and offer Barack Obama bobbleheads (although I think bobble-ears would be more appropriate), economic stimulus pricing, universal health care (i.e. free Band-Aids to the first 1,000 fans, which isn't quite "universal," but very appropriate for the state of our health care system), and more. Minor League Baseball promotions are the best.

Finally, as most of you know, the missus and I keep an eye on the goings-on in Scotland. The utter lack of baseball in Scotland is a giant "con" on my list for moving there. It turns out there's not an "utter lack" after all.

The Scotland Baseball League looks very ragtaggy, with mismatched uniforms and a website reminiscent of the site for the league I played for in Vermont, which makes me think I could possibly qualify for the national team. I wonder if they're playing with logs and stones, and I sure hope they're wearing cups under their kilts.

Now I'm just being a jerk, of course, and the truth is there's nothing I covet more than the Scotland Baseball jersey.