Hey, baseball is back! On this week's podcast, Paul and I gave our 2017 predictions. You'll find those below. As is our custom, we'll revisit them during the All-Star break and then again after the season. #accountability

Today is our older brother John's birthday. Happy birthday, John!

To celebrate his birth, I decided to write a post about baseball things that occurred on April 5. I hope this makes up for the Cubs getting rained out.

Remember the Allstate Mayhem guy? 

Two topics that captivate me more than almost anything else are baseball and World War II. So then it makes sense that over the weekend I found myself looking through the New York Times archives (sorry DJT) for stories from Opening Day during the war. I eventually narrowed my search to the first Opening Day after the war began: April 14, 1942.

Today, April 2nd, marks the start of the 2017 MLB season. At just after 12:00 CT, Chris Archer threw the first pitch of the season to Brett Gardner (a ball) at Tropicana Field and real baseball is officially back.

But before we dive completely into the baseball season, let's take a look back at the offseason. Specifically, I want to discuss the offseason lengths of each major American sport. Baseball has a reputation for having a long season; yesterday at the gym I heard someone remark to his friend, "Baseball is already back? It seems like last year just ended." So, I pulled out my calendar and did some math to see just how long the season drags (and by effect, how long the offseason is).