Monday BP: It’s 2023!

Happy Monday, San Francisco Giants fans. And more importantly, happy new year! I hope 2023 is a wonderful year for each and every one of you, full of joy, love, and great memories.

Every time a new year begins, I think of baseball. We’re still a ways away from the season starting, but I still associate baseball with the new year. Baseball is one of the few sports that plays all its games in a calendar year, rather than wrapping around and spanning two years. And so new years feels a little symbolic.

Two days ago, we had no more baseball this year. Now we have baseball this year. A whole lot of it. A minimum of 162 Giants games, which is so many baseball games.

So this is when I start to get excited. After a few months of “no more Giants baseball in 2022,” I’m now onto “lots of Giants baseball in 2023.” There are 87 days until the Giants start the season against Aaron Judge’s New York Yankees. We’re only about six weeks away from pitchers and catchers reporting.

And then the magic will start. We’ll see Spring Training performances that excite us. We’ll see games that matter, and amazing performances. Kyle Harrison will make his Major League debut. Prospects will perform well and give us hope for the future. The Los Angeles Dodgers will lose at least a few games, and we’ll celebrate them. Kruk and Kuip and Dave and Jon will serenade us so brilliantly and eloquently.

Knock on wood, but this is the first “normal” year of baseball since 2019. That’s pretty damn exciting.

Happy new year, Giants fans. It’s a new year. And that year is about to get filled up with baseball.