Football is fun.
Hockey is okay.
Don't even get me started on basketball. (I don't really consider it a sport, but we can talk about that some other time.)
Baseball is the best.
I have been impatiently waiting for opening day since the closing game of the last World Series.
My wife, on the other hand, enjoys the off-season because then I am available to help out with stuff around the house. She knows that once baseball season starts, I become completely useless.
There is something about the bright, hot sun and the smell of the grass and the speed of the throws and the snap of the mitt that makes me want to enjoy it all on TV in my dark, cool basement, drinking a beer and not moving a muscle for three hours.
My wife and I have a standing agreement that she can force me to do just about anything (holding her purse while she is trying on clothes, buying feminine products for her at the grocery store, etc.) for her during the off season if she leaves me alone when baseball games are on.
This has worked pretty well for almost four years. But now we have a kid and the rules have changed.
Like any dad, I had images of my son and me sitting down to watch baseball together. He would ask me about a rule or a certain player, and, like my dad did with me, I would fake an answer.
We would play catch after the game, and I'd show him how to scratch himself without getting really obscene.
Then I realized my son is barely six months old. He doesn't even understand the concept of patty-cake. What chance do I have of pretending to tell him the difference between a curve ball and a slider?
Although he is a little young, he is pretty smart. And he has half of my genes in him, so he should enjoy baseball. (Of course, he has half of my wife's genes in him, too, so he could end up becoming a major fan of ice-skating and tap dancing.)
I figured I had a 50-50 shot at making my son a baseball fan, even at this young age. After all, they tell you to read to kids when they are this young even though all they want to do is drool on the pages.
So my son and I sat down to watch the opening day game. He sat on my lap and was immediately entranced by the TV screen. That got my hopes up because I recognized his blank stare as the same one I get when I'm watching the game.
Throughout the first half inning, he just stared. He occasionally giggled. I made myself believe that he was happy that my team - The Colorado Rockies - was doing well.
But then there was a third out and the commercials came on. And my son sat in my arms and laughed. It was one of those really annoying commercials where a local car dealer comes on wearing a Rockies' uniform and talks about hitting home run sales.
My son loved it.
It was followed by another stupid commercial at which my son giggled even more.
I surfed around a little and noticed that my son smiled at just about everything on the screen - including CNN, TNN and even the Weather Channel.
I suddenly came to the conclusion that my son does have my genes. Sadly, they aren't the baseball genes. They are the genes that allow me to sit in front of a television for hours watching completely inane programs and never noticing how bad the programming is.
Yes, my son is a born couch potato.
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