As much as chiding the old was group therapy, the new home of the Giants is being brought in with communal fanfare. In less than two months, play will begin in Pacific Bell Park, "The Sweetest Little Park in Baseball" they are building in downtown San Francisco. In fact, since February, the team and the phone company have coordinated a "Park Pitch Road Trip," through which the ball that will used for the first pitch in the new stadium has been on tour. The folk of Sacramento, Chico and Berkeley have had a chance to throw the ball and symbolically take part in the opening. The celebration will culminate Opening Day in the new park, when a "Pitch Relay" will deliver the ball, Olympic-like, through the streets of San Francisco.

Of course, baseball is not perfect. The sport has been tarnished by money worries of men who play a game for a living and those who make money on these men's talents. It has languished without the voice of an independent commissioner; it still lacks representative numbers of minorities in management positions. I do not deny that these issues mar the game as we know it.

However, baseball just seems "right" in way other professional sports in America do not. Basketball is about giants. Golf is just plain boring as well as being a huge waste of water and space. Hockey and football have muscle-bound players you wouldn't want to meet in an open square, let alone a dark alley. Baseball can be scary too--just think back to John Kruk's reaction when meeting Randy Johnson at the All-Star Game--it is simply a game where a normal guy can get up there, on more than any given Sunday, and have a chance against the league's best. The lyric "Put me in coach/ I'm ready to play today" is about baseball for a reason.

I know I speak with the logic of an enthused lemming nearing the cliff of Opening Day. Why have newscasts been filled with footage of players playing catch and stretching at spring training, instead of hockey or basketball highlights? Because spring training is the proof that there is a new life coming in April, a new passion to grip us from Opening Day to the playoffs and World Series, a life to live between the foul lines.

Besides, what sound can compare with the crack of the bat?

Adam I. Arenson '00-'01 is a history and literature concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.