Here we are just a few days from baseball's strike date. I can't support baseball players striking, and I won't dig into it here lest I unleash a font of incoherent venom that, while enjoyable, wouldn't really help my mood much. But I'll say that I didn't like it 8 years ago, I don't like it now, and dammit, I really hate the major leagues right now, even as I cheer on the A's and Giants.

So, what am I doing about it? Watching all the feel-good baseball movies I can, to try and build some goodwill toward the sport itself rather than the players. Two days ago, I watched Bull Durham. Yesterday and today, I watched the three volumes of Princess Nine I had lying around the apartment but hadn't gotten around to yet. Tomorrow, I have The Natural on tap, and I plan to fire up The Bad News Bears any day now.

Geez. Sometimes I wonder why I bother with baseball. Then I listen to a convenient little .wav I have lying around for situations like these:

The one constant through all the years, Ray, is baseball. America's rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good... and that could be again. Oh, people will come, Ray, people will most definitely come.

That always makes me feel better. Next stop after all those DVDs, I'm gonna dig into Adachi's famous manga, Touch. But it's friggin' 26 volumes, so I'm going to go knocking on a friend's door to borrow that and H2. Then I figure I might have enough goodwill toward baseball that I won't burn down a stadium...

Then again, maybe not. Ah, well. At least football season's about to start.