Poll: The 2014 Seattle Mariners

I think my favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. Its raison d'etre is sufficient justification to consume as much food and drink as much as possible. There is football on all day. It's the beginning of a four day weekend. Thanksgiving is a day to put aside our daily routines, however healthy or unhealthy and simply feast on the bounty. All the day asks is we be thankful.

So it is with Opening Day. The Mariners have been bad enough for long enough that age and apathy have taken their toll on the once mighty Empire of Mariner Bloggers. But today is special so it gets special writing from special writers. Whatever part of the baseball fan you were as child that remains in you is alive today. It's not a day to worry, or a day to be sad.

This is the day to shake off the layer of cynicism that builds up over the years. If only for today let yourself be happy and have fun. Make up a new metric to measure the game, spend some time searching MLB archives or YouTube. Honor the gifs of games gone past and look forward to the gifs of baseball future.

The 2014 Mariners are odd. Every Spring brings optimism. Last year's Mariners surged into the regular season on the strength of 8,425 Cactus League home runs. The 2010 Mariners had Cliff Tractor Pimpin' Lee. 2008 had Erik Bedard and the good vibes left over from 2007.

But this year's team has something that precious few Mariners teams have had the past decade: they have some smart people projecting them to be average to oh my dear sweet Lord dare I say it slightly above average. If the Mariners dance their familiar macabre dance of failure then analysts will not be smugly writing about how the team's shortcomings were obvious. This year they'll have to write about how they failed to meet expectations, and where the models failed.

For that reason, and for so many others, let the suffering verbs sleep for a day. Tomorrow the Mariners might be 0-1. Their hollowed out rotation could cave in within the season's 1st month, and their staggering ability to not develop young positional talent could continue. Robinson Cano could begin to understand the plight of Adrian Beltre, and another precious year of our King could slip by with his court filled with jesters.

But today is not the day for that. It's our day to feast and feast we shall. We'll feast on hope and on possibility. We'll indulge in Felix's Tiantian torso twist. We'll savor Crazy Legs' every move, the hyper efficiency of Kyle Seager's load, plant and explosion. We'll wonder at the grace of Robinson Cano, swoon over Michael Saunders. We'll laugh at Fernando Rodney's hat, and watch Mike Zunino's pitch framing with new found respect.

It's the day for every author at LL to write an article, to watch 12 hours of baseball, to play catch, drink Fremont Pale Ale and not give one hot damn about what happens tomorrow. Today's the feast. Let tomorrow worry about itself.