As soon as the Final Four ended, so did my sports season (minus the NBA playoffs and the NHL playoffs to watch my Penguins). Football has been long gone and college basketball is now over.

And in comes baseball season.

Wake me up when September ends.

I hate baseball.

I hate saying that I hate baseball because I used to live for it.

I loved the game. I should still love baseball. It’s our American pastime. But growing up during this era, and growing further from your playing days makes it harder and harder to enjoy the game — even more so when you’re a Pirates or Indians fan.

I guess you could call it a love/hate relationship.

For instance, I still love the sunflower seeds, Big League Chew, hot dogs, cracker jacks and snow cones.

But I hate going to big league games and paying $30 for that order.

I love playing baseball.

I live for the feeling of a home run, triple or throwing a kid out from behind the plate. As long as I’m playing catcher, pitcher or up at bat, it’s fun as hell. Other than that, I’d probably be the kid asleep in the dugout or the loner chasing bugs in the outfield.

I hate watching baseball.

The average game lasts three hours. In that amount of time there may be, if the fans are lucky, 10 to 15 hits, three home runs?

If there’s a true “pitching duel” going on, great, awesome! I’ll let them duke it out and catch the highlights on SportsCenter, but there’s no chance I’m watching a guy play a game of catch with the umpire signaling ball or strike.

That’s not my idea of a thrilling sporting event.

I hate Bud Selig.

The guy ended an All-Star Game in a tie. Selig looks like something you hang on your door for Halloween. He’s the most monotone, boring, dumbest commissioner in the world of sports. If he knew what was good for the game, he’d step down and turn over the reins to someone else.

I love MLB mascots and Manny Ramirez.

I feel like they have the same amount of brain cells and same sense of humor. Baseball needs more of this from their players.

I love the seventh inning stretch, because of two reasons: The game only has one hour left and I can sing along, out loud, and not be made fun of.

I hate that baseball doesn’t have a salary cap.

I hate it because I’m a Pittsburgh Pirates fan by birth, and because I hate the New York Yankees. They’re spoiled, overpaid and don’t win.

For this reason, I love when the New York Yankees lose.

I love the MLB All-Star weekend.

Not for the game itself, but for the home run derby. I love seeing baseballs crushed out of the park as if they were golf balls on a par five. I love seeing the players’ kids cheer their dads on. It takes me back to the days when baseball was fun, when it was all just a game and wasn’t about money.

I loved playing in tournaments on those hot summer days with my best friends.

Everything about the experience was awesome, from the coaches (dads that were like a second family) to the crazy parents who thought they knew the game better than Peter Gammons. I miss the days of carpools to different ballparks, chants from the dugouts, rally caps, chewing those BBQ David’s sunflower seeds and beating up on teams like we were the ones on steroids.

Now that the game is tarnished, with former greats in federal courts and steroids ruining the game both on and off the field, I don’t think I’ll ever have the appreciation for baseball as I once did as a kid.

The love/hate relationship sadly sides more to the hate, and it kills me to say that.