Baseball has been slagging a bit. Even this season has started off without a bang thanks to Manny Machado (Padres) and Bryce Harper, waiting to sign. Harper finally signed and it’s a record haul, $13 years, $330 million dollars (people in Philadelphia will now remember where they were when this happened), full no-trade and no opt-out clause.

Baseball is back on the front page! That’s not the normal place for it but it will be tomorrow. For the newspapers that are left. For websites and business that are predicated on baseball, this is good news. Baseball and Harper, in general, will be talked about all year. Advertisers will be more interested in him in Philadelphia as compared to Washington. This is something the sport can market. All Harper has to do is live up to the contract, which is no small feat.

So many stories will be coming out of the City of Brotherly Love. Baseball stories. I love that. The Phillies are now the team to beat in the East. The Nationals or Braves are next. The Mets have been left in the dust in the offseason battle. If their pitching is near perfect, they could be in it, but that’s a big if.

People are lined up in Philadelphia to get tickets right now. The windows are jammed. Philadelphia is an old school city that way. People still go and use the walk-up window and point to the seats and pick them out. There’s something intrinsically cool about that, to me at least.

Spring has sprung here in Philadelphia. It’s still winter in Washington D.C. But really, spring training just got a nice shot in the arm and now there will be a lot more baseball coverage online and ultimately that should make all fans of the game happy.