American League

• The A.L. East will again be decided by the two best teams in baseball, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, with the loser wrapping up the AL Wild Card.  The best young pitchers in baseball are the Yankees’ Joba Chamberlain, the Yankees’ Phil Hughes, and the Red Sox’s Clay Buchholz.  The Toronto Blue Jays are a fine team in the wrong division.  The young and talented Tampa Bay Rays are moving on up… to fourth place; Rays third baseman Evan Longoria is a leading Rookie of the Year candidate.  The Baltimore Orioles are abysmal.
• The A.L. Central will feature another battle between the Cleveland Indians and the Detroit Tigers; edge to Detroit and the top lineup in the Majors.  The Minnesota Twins will miss Johan Santana, the Chicago White Sox are stuck in mud, and the Kansas City Royals are barely worth a mention.
• The A.L. West will be won by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.  It won’t be close.  Former Oriole Erik Bedard will improve the Seattle Mariners’ fortunes.  Neither the Oakland Athletics nor the Texas Rangers have the talent to make any noise.  

National League

• The N.L. East belongs to the New York Mets by virtue of the Johan Santana trade.  The Philadelphia Phillies will contend first for the division title and then for the Wild Card, the Atlanta Braves nipping at their heels.  The Washington Nationals have a new stadium but lack pitching.  The Florida Marlins are several years away from being competitive.
• The N.L. Central will be won by the Chicago Cubs, nosing out the Milwaukee Brewers.  The St. Louis Cardinals and Houston Astros are middle-of-the-pack units.  New manager Dusty Baker should reinvigorate the Cincinnati Reds, but there’s only so far they can go.  There’s no hope ahead for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
• The N.L. West is the best division in baseball.  Between the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Colorado Rockies, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the San Diego Padres, who knows who’ll win?  Meanwhile, the awful San Francisco Giants will lose.  A lot.  

There, the current knee-jerk preactions for each Major League team entering the upcoming season.  (Keep in mind that the opinions described may not represent my own personal perspective.  I am dubious about Detroit’s chances, for instance, due to my feeling that the Indians possess superior pitching.)

Will many of these expectations come true?  Sure.  Why then list them?  Because I cherish the snapshot in time we find ourselves in before events can transpire, when our imagination runs rampant on the possibilities:  that moment of NCAA Tournament bracket deliberation before any game has been played; that moment of taut anticipation before the opening kickoff of the Super Bowl; the morning of Opening Day.

And then I revel in the shattering of our expectations.  I revel in the surprise team seizing the day and capturing our collective imaginations, in the heroics of a previously unknown player turning the most cynical of media disseminators into a roaring supporter.  I revel in those moments when sports makes our hearts beat faster, for there is nothing that we love more than to see something we never dared to hope for.  It may be an event as symbolic as the Miracle on Ice, as farfetched as Boise State’s sequence of gadget plays to Oklahoma, as stunning as Cassius Clay knocking out Sonny Liston, or as emotional as the lap of Cal Ripken, Jr., around Oriole Park at Camden Yards the night Lou Gehrig’s unbreakable record was broken.

Perhaps this upcoming baseball season will deliver another such moment, something we never could have expected.  I can’t wait.

Check that. I can wait.