There are people out there that don't believe in Superman. They think he's a myth, a power fantasy, a parable for outsiders or those who wish to do good. I pity them.

Because Superman is most definitely real, soaring above us and keeping us safe. i mean, sure, he's not working at The Daily Planet (because the newspaper industry is dead), and he's not married to a woman named Lois. Those are all fictions created by the government to throw the general public off his scent. Rather, he's been hiding in plain sight this whole time, under the guise of former ballplayer Cal Eldred.

In the past, I was an uptight, miserable human at ballgames. Like any teenager in a record store, I was judgmental of everyone around me, and like a crazy person, I refused to get up, even when the sum of hot dogs, pretzels and beer were impacting my bowels, for fear that my scorecard would get messed up. But I've mellowed, I'm more accepting. I now use the Phil Rizzuto method of marking 'WW' for Wasn't Watching anytime I want to get something to eat, run to the bathroom, or stare longingly at the stirrup socks of the fourth outfielder. 

I've also relaxed my regulations about what it means to be a fan at a ballgame--it's perfectly fine to show up and know nothing about the game. Do you like drinking beer in the sun? Come to a game! Do you want to get your kids out of the house for a few hours? As long as they don't bother me and you don't ask me to look after them "just until halftime," sure, come out to the yard. Baseball is not the SERIOUS ACTIVITY with LIFE OR DEATH consequences that my younger self thought it was. Instead it's a diversion that can provide hours of enjoyment for both baseball junkies who study the minor shifts of the infielders in between pitches and the people who just like to shout WHOO! every 3-5 minutes. 

Still, even with all of this peace, love, and understanding in my heart, I think it's time that we came up with some very easy to abide by ground rules. For the betterment of all peoples. 

ARTICLE I

We get it. Games on weeknights are hard to get to, what with work and picking your kid up from detention for inappropriate Facebook status updates. Any arrival before the 3rd inning on a weeknight is entirely excusable, especially if you run in with a briefcase and say, to no one in particular, "Boy, the boss sure was a hard ass today, huh?" 

Ultimately, I think we realize that baseball doesn't matter. It's a fun sport -- even a beautiful sport -- but baseball doesn't add anything tangible to our lives. We can't eat it, can't use it to build anything, and most of us aren't paid by or because of it. Instead, we follow baseball for the joy it brings to our lives, and because life is too short to fill it with things that don't bring you joy.

That's why I've decided to stop rooting for the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Rays have been sabermetric darlings for the last few seasons, since Stuart Sternberg and Andrew Friedman took over the club in in the mid-aughts and transformed what had been one of the worst organizations in Major League Baseball into a shining model of organizational efficiency in just a few seasons. Their rise was gleefully catalogued by Jonah Keri in his excellent book, The Extra 2%, which explained how Sternberg and Friedman not only remade the product on the field, but also the culture of the Rays.

Friedman and his club effectively exploited undervalued resources in the game, creating a rotating door of elite prospects who could make an almost immediate impact on the major-league club, and built a perpetual powerhouse in the American League East. Despite having one of the lowest revenue streams and payrolls in the game, the Rays have not finished below .500 since Sternberg and Friedman took the reins. Theirs was the quintessential underdog story -- the Bad News Bears against the real life Yankees, as well as the Red Sox -- and coming out on top. As Americans, we have come to love these underdog stories of unlikely heroes, who succeed by working harder and better than their more bloated competitors. The Rays story is the story of Bill Gates. Of Steve Jobs. It's Villanova basketball, the Miracle on Ice, and Hoosiers.

Hi, Adrian Beltre here. Yes, that Adrian Beltre. And yeah, I get it, you all think it's pretty hilarious when people try to touch my head and I freak out. I mean, I'm a modern man of the internet, I've seen the gifs and even I have a laugh. Just look at some of these moving pictures, how could you not chuckle: 

We like to pretend that we know most of what's happening on and around baseball, but the fact is that we don't. Not really. We know nearly nothing of baseball in the 1800s, we make educated guesses at baseball before the advent of television, and even today, with our newfangled hickeymajigs, our defensive ratings are woefully inaccurate. Now though, we have been given the briefest and tiniest of glimpses into the world of the baseball scout, that unsung hero who, as Kevin Goldstein reminded us during the Up and In podcast days, spends much of his time pooping in McDonald's restrooms. 

The Baseball Hall of Fame, when they weren't funding unnecessary steroid research, put together the greatest database of baseball scouting reports ever seen. In the past, these were rarely released, and so people have gone (justifiably) crazy for the Bo Jackson, Ken Griffey Jr, and Chipper Jones reports that are full of glowing phrases like Monster of Mash, Mayhem, and Moxie. However, there is so much more to be unearthed. Because while any scout worth employing could look at those players and see greatness, it's the other players, the mid-rotation guys, the utility infielders, that required someone to take a leap of faith. And these scouting reports document that. 

There is David Eckstein's which, in the first sentence of his summary, refers to him as a "gutty gamer."  This is perhaps the first published occurrence of the phrase being used on him, it's a historical landmark. Or there's the report filed with the Chicago White Sox that called Tim Wakefield a non-prospect because he lacked a fastball and his splitter should be thrown harder. Then there are the ones like Jim Abbott's where he's proclaimed a "WINNER" all in caps, and dammit, that's fine with me. Jim Abbott, playing and succeeding at Major League Baseball with one arm, is a winner. 

I promise you that I'm not trying to drum up page views by writing articles with titles like "Farts: How Your Butt is Killing the Planet" or "Which Game of Thrones Character Are You? A 20 Part Slideshow NSFW." But I am worried about the future of baseball as a spectator sport. 

I may have been operating for a while on a rather foolish assumption. 

See, whenever a player has been caught driving while intoxicated -- like yesterday, after Yovani Gallardo was picked up with an almost impossible to believe .22 blood-alcohol level -- and the blogosphere/twitterati have piped up with their outrage over the deep moral inconsistency in baseball, I've joined in.

Drug use (both the "PE" and recreational varieties), which may or may not affect a player's performance on the field but is ultimately more or less harmless in real life, is punished severely and condemned harshly, while driving a vehicle while intoxicated, which does not directly impact play on the field but does seriously endanger real people's lives (as baseball was reminded, still pretty recently), generally earns one little mild verbal admonishment and nothing else. 

Baseball's attitude (or lack thereof) toward DUIs is silly, and kind of embarrassing. So we whine a bit. Some of the whines take a form like: where's his suspension? Can we suspend DUI Guy for 50 games too? And so on.  

But a thought occurred to me today for the first time: you guys don't actually mean that, do you?

The Pirates, and by extension their fans, should be used to losing by now. Much like a garbage man should be no longer mind hefting around bags of refuse and Lindsay Lohan should be accustomed to court-ordered drug rehab, the Pirates should be nearly immune to the crushing sting of defeat. If 20 consecutive losing seasons and two straight years of contention followed by the crushing betrayal of August and September (including a Houston Astros-ian 20-39 after August 1st), losing should be easy. But baseball, that cruel mistress, always teases players and fans with its promise of better tomorrows. 

And it's not like a bad start ensures a poor season. The Pirates were 2-4 through six games last season, before fighting for first place into July. The 2011 team was 4-2 en route to a 72-90 record. Last year's World Series winning Giants dropped their first three and were 2-4. So the simple fact is that two series at the beginning of April really doesn't say a whole lot.  But the Pirates, with a few decent mid-rotation options and a dreadlocked and likable superstar finally had a club that seemed to be able to best that mythical 81 wins. So while starting 1-5 is not great and can be overcome, scoring all of eight runs in that time is still pretty disgusting. 

To give example, the Pirates have scored fewer runs than Coco Crisp and Adam Jones have for each of their respective clubs. The Pirates, should they continue on this path of damnation and brimstone are currently on pace to score a whopping 216 runs for the season, only slightly more than the 192 the Original Billy Hamilton scored for the 1892 Philadelphia Phillies. 

Chances are, during the first batch of games on Monday, while constantly checking your fantasy lineup, you realized one of two things. Either 1) You didn't do nearly as good a job drafting your fantasy team as you thought or 2) You really don't seem to care as much as the other people around you. And if you're in a third camp, that of the smugly satisfied fantasy player, while I don't wish any true ill will on you, I do hope your next fountain soda doesn't have nearly enough of that flavor syrup. Serves you right, you stuck up prig. 

You see, I used to be in that first camp before I realized that not only was I unskilled at the art of 5x5, I was simultaneously overwhelmed by the constant update of lineups and disinterested in the scouring of waiver wire for saves. All of the things I loved about baseball, the action, narrative, even statistics that I would immerse myself in on Baseball-Reference.com (and before its existence, the thousands of baseball cards that littered my closet), weren't represented in fantasy. Focusing so narrowly on home runs, RBI, batting average and steals, or wins, WHIP, saves, and strikeouts, sucked all the joy out of baseball. Sure, the truly great players were always valuable, but except in the deepest of leagues, fourth outfielders and back of the rotation starters were worth nothing. And you never got any points for a great catch or a guy handing a ball to a fan with only two outs in the inning. 

These predictions are obligatory. Once a year, as the season starts, I’m compelled to make a record of what I think is going to happen in Major League Baseball, so that you can point and laugh at me once the season’s done, and you can draw inspiration that damn near any idiot can write about baseball on the Internet. It’s a public service that I provide to you, who are the public. I am very magnanimous like that.

Feel free to disagree, call me names, or threaten my physical well-being in the comments.