Here we are already a month into the new baseball season and so many things are still not clear. For instance, I can’t decide which new truck I should buy. In the early days of televised baseball, the choices were easier. All of the advertising was aimed at men, for one thing, although I suspected that it was really aimed at boys who were about 12 or 13 years old. You were supposed to shave, drink beer, and buy gasoline for your car, probably a Chevy. As I recall, I was supposed to shave with a Gillette blade, sting my face with some smelly after shave by Mennen, go get some high octane fuel pumped into my Chevy’s tank, and then get some Schlitz, all while the womenfolk smiled proudly in the background. Things are so much more complicated now, chiefly because you don’t get one ad per half inning but rather almost non stop plugs for any number of brands of the same thing. It wears me out.

Plus now I get stomach aches, because those pictures of all the various fast food nation items make me anything but hungry. That yellow gooey stuff that gets slowly poured over what Taco Bell tries to pass off as nachos that they have the gall to call cheese on their cravings value menu or whatever they call that! Just imagine paying millions to sell something for the people who just got ripped on marijuana at near midnight and only have two bucks in their pocket! And what’s the best phone deal? Damned if I can tell. I liked the deal where it was wired to the wall and I was able to speak and hear clearly to almost anyone anywhere and if it needed repair someone came to my house and fixed it. That was pretty good, even if it was tapped.

There are still a few good choices to be made, however, and one of them seems to be the Houston Astros to prevail in the American league West. Despite losing some key elements, like Charlie Morton, Dallas Keuchel, Marwin Gonzalez, and Brian McCann, they have so much of things like hitting, fielding, pitching, and running left that it doesn’t matter. They added Michael Brantley, Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve are healthy again, and Alex Bregman could get even better, so they don’t have much to worry about.

The Seattle Mariners looked very good out of the gate but I don’t know if it can last. Felix Hernandez looked more like Heathcliff Slocumb than Cy Young last year and, while the fearsome early power show from the likes of Edwin Encarnacion,Daniel Vogelbach, and Mitch Haniger has been impressive, there doesn’t appear to be a lot of depth on the squad. We who look favorably upon the Northwest Nine can only fantasize about how nice it would have been if Mike Trout had somehow been able to forsake the Fountain Valley Angels and become the center fielder for Seattle.

The Oakland Athletics have a very good, interesting team, a very bright manager in Bob Melvin, a ballpark that was pretty good before Al Davis called in an air strike, and disgusting ownership that has treated its fans shabbily for years and years. Matt Olson at first base and Matt Chapman at third promise to provide great defense and good power for years for whatever team they eventually play for. Ramon Laureano has been a real find in center field. The only element lacking for the A’s is a reliable starting rotation of pitchers, that element that used to be highly regarded throughout the game.

The Texas Rangers have a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and they are building a new yard for their fans to go to in order to watch them strike out and hit home runs. They are a bit lovable now though because they have Hunter Pence.

The Mission Viejo Angels have Mike Trout, the ghost of Albert Pujols, some very good defensive players like Andrelton Simmons, and eventually the fascinating Shohei Ohtani again, or at least half of him. Once they decide to get serious about the pitching portion of the game they might get past competing with Disneyland and start threatening the Astros.