Wondrous Major League Baseball Opening Day is just 19 slow little days away. It will be here in no time at all.

………………. as long as the pitchers around Major League Baseball continue to throw strikes that is.

Yes it’s true. We take for granted every day something that is so very difficult to do. If the pitchers of this great game don’t throw the ball over the plate enough times to record 27 outs, we have no regular season. There’d be no World Series, no batting champion, no Silver Slugger Awards, and certainly no Cy Youngs.

We could be stuck on today’s calendar in the MLB slate, for a relative forever. If another strike was never thrown, it would certainly cause some problems wouldn’t it?

As a manager, if a guy suddenly goes Steve Blass on you and can’t seem to throw the ball over the dish even if there’s a million dollars or Pamela Anderson riding on it; what do you do? You sub in another pitcher. But, what if that guy can’t throw a strike either? You eventually deplete your entire calvary of pitchers just trying to record enough outs to get through the game.

After you run out of pitchers, you put Brent Mayne out there. Or you put Jose Canseco out there. Or you just start plugging in guys who don’t mean shit to the organization and you don’t care if they tear their arms up; you simply want 9 strikes and three outs. That’s all your asking. Just enough to skate free and play tomorrow.

But what if those guys can’t throw strikes either? We’d be stuck in baseball purgatory. It’s really the only thing that can ruin it for all of us.

Never take for granted your team’s pitcher who is the grease that makes this whole beautiful machine work. Without them we don’t have a 7th inning stache. We don’t have Harry Caray singing his song in the 7th inning. We don’t have Joe Dimaggio hitting in 56 straight ballgames.

Always be thankful to those guys for being able to throw one over the dish every once in a while; even if they do throw like Barry Zito or Mike Lincoln sometimes.