CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER! Help me help you pick your favourite team

Baseball starts tomorrow! You need someone to root for!

Opening Day for Major League Baseball is tomorrow (Thursday). I am excited beyond measure.

I have everything I need for this annual extravaganza, the breaking of a six-month fast: an MLBTV subscription, a family who understand my addiction, matchsticks with which to prop open my eyelids as I attempt to watch as many of the back-to-back games as possible and a faith that, despite clear fin de siècle vibes, my Houston Astros can wring one more season of success from a long, complicated and controversial golden era.

I fell for Houston when I was working as an editor on Ben Reiter’s book Astroball in the wake of their 2017 World Series win. But the love of baseball that flourished from that experience is greater than one-club fandom. I’ll watch the hell out of the Brewers at the Yankees, the Guardians at the Royals and, if I make it to the wee sma’ hours, the Tigers at the Dodgers.

But it helps to have your heart in it, so let’s make sure all of you have picked a side before things get serious. Let’s do some matchmaking.

THE GLORY HUNTER

You’re looking for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Baseball media in the US have slowly been coming terms with how much better than everyone else the Dodgers have become. They won the World Series last year behind their big bats, including Shohei Ohtani, who became the first player ever to hit more than 50 home runs and steal more than 50 bases in a single season.

What they missed was a top-tier pitching staff, so they went ahead and built the best in baseball – both in terms of starters (the pitchers who open the game and hope to go five, six or even more of the nine innings) and relievers (the high-octane arms who come on in place of the starters to finish the job).

Baseball is famously unpredictable when it comes to the playoffs, but the Dodgers are as red-hot of a favourite as that structure allows.

THE MOVIE FAN

Do you have nostalgia for Charlie Sheen’s heavy-framed glasses and DIY haircut in Major League? The Cleveland Indians from that fantastic movie are now the Cleveland Guardians for obvious reasons, but they are still worth your time – a brilliantly-run low-cost, high-achieving unit with a superstar in the middle: Jose Ramirez, who is also a badass.

Maybe Moneyball is more your thing? The Oakland Athletics are no longer in Oakland – they are in temporary accommodation in Sacramento, California as they prepare for a permanent shift to Las Vegas in 2028. For the next three seasons, they are simply ‘The Athletics’. If you’re more down with the principles of Moneyball than the uniforms, the best exponents of David-versus-Goliath economics are Cleveland and the Milwaukee Brewers, who, like the team constructed by Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt, constantly lose their stars and find bargain bin replacements, finding success in division but falling just short in the playoffs.

If you’re about Bull Durham – and why wouldn’t you be? – then the minor league Durham Bulls are an affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, another team playing away from their home stadium this season (this time due to a natural disaster instead of a cynical franchise relocation).

THE LONG-TERM INVESTOR

Are you the kind of person who was into Nirvana when they were on the SubPop label? If you like getting onto a good thing on the ground floor and you don’t mind waiting for the payoff, may I recommend the Washington Nationals? Having won the World Series in 2019 and instantly dismantled that team, they have been in doldrums since, but all the while recruiting and developing a talented young core that is slowly coming to fruition. They are in division with some behemoths – the Mets, Phillies and Braves – but in three years, maybe two, they should be ready to strike. And you’ll be able to say you liked them when they were shit.

THE MASOCHIST

Do you seek pain? Do you crave defeat? Do you wish the universe to constantly tell you that are without worth or hope and undeserving of love?

If so, the good news is I can offer you a choice of teams upon which to pin your withered heart.

The Chicago White Sox were literally the worst team in the history of baseball last year and have not got substantially better. And the Miami Marlins are perhaps even more disappointing as they have slowly exhausted a talented roster so that they have descended to the bottom rung in the same way as a frog is boiled in that most overused of metaphors (sorry for using).

THE BRAND AMBASSADOR

The biggest brand in baseball remains the New York Yankees, purveyor of the most popular headwear on Planet Earth.

In sporting terms, they are almost certainly overvalued – the top tier of their talent masks a lack of depth that makes another run to the World Series a dodgy proposition. Injury to their star pitcher, Gerrit Cole, may be the ultimate limiter on their potential this year.

But stick with them, and you’ll get to watch games from one of world sport’s great cauldrons and you will also have access to one of the great one-club podcasts in global sports media: Talkin’ Yanks. More on the guys behind that later.

Pick a team. Any team. There’s 30 of ‘em.

Let’s play ball.