I am Michael Rathwell, a senior catcher/pitcher for the baseball team.   On Feb. 9, Missionary baseball takes the field against Occidental to start a three-game series.   For the fourth season in a row, I will be spending my spring ingloriously squatting behind the plate, my face less than one foot away from a strange man’s ass while my pitcher and I try to get him to fail.   And I am jacked!

Our Occidental series figures to be the first time that we will be playing baseball outside (and in warm weather!).   The stupid amount of snow: and its annoying offspring, SlushFest 2008: sometimes sloppy, sometimes icy, always inconvenient: forced the team to take shelter in the Sherwood Bunker and its mercury-laced floors.   So while most athletes look forward to their seasons with anticipation, I have been stir-crazy for baseball since January.

Throughout the season, I will be contributing articles to the Pioneer chronicling not only our on-field success but off-the-field anecdotes.   Even though the working premise of this column is a diary of a varsity athlete, I assure you that the word “diary” will be applied loosely (and not in the way a 12-year-old intends).

My goals for this column are twofold.   First, I want this to be an entertaining, behind-the-scenes look at what the season of a varsity athlete is like.   I will be providing player profiles, on-the-road anecdotes and sexy bits of gossip about all of the pretty faces on the baseball team.   Stuff you won’t find in the box score.   Second, it will be a space to address some of the issues surrounding athletics on campus.   I will be training a critical (and, yes, admittedly partial) eye on how athletics fits in with the larger Whitman community.

If this isn’t appealing to you, have fun reading “The Ear.”   If it is, make sure you check back every week for funny stories, off-color jokes and occasional reflection and analysis.