(Originally posted February 13, 2000, reposted to new site November 1, 2008)
I never anticipated how difficult the offseason was going to be this year. It’s my first offseason since my return to baseball fanaticism, and I just had no idea it would be this hard to get through the dark months.
Oh, sure, in November there were a few tidbits, like the awards and such, that counted as “news.” Trade rumors. Actual trades. A trickle here, and a trickle there. I found myself re-reading my dog-eared copy of Yankee Magazine from August ’99, and watching video highlights of past games on various web sites.
As of this writing, it’s February, and to get my “fix,” I’ve been surfing the web almost every day. I’ve grown fond of The Sporting News site, and I also pop in to majorleaguebaseball.com, and I check the Yankees web site (which is terribly over-designed, by the way–very graphics-heavy and printed in tiny, tiny white type on a dark blue background… it’s painful to look at but I have to keep going back…). I get most of my direct Yankees news from the Yankees index of The Bergen Record online. Pathetic, aren’t I?
But today Spring Training officially started, and not only that, it was above freezing here in Boston! All of a sudden, real anticipation is shooting through my veins–the 2000 Season is upon us!
My boyfriend, corwin, who lives with me, thinks I’m nuts. But when he gets on my case about my obsession, I remind him of last fall. That’s when he was the one who was so dejected when a Yankee game was called off due to rain, we ended up going to see the Kevin Costner movie “For the Love of the Game” that night! This after he’d had to rent “Bull Durham” and “Field of Dreams” on two other “off” nights. (Here in Red Sox Land the only way we can hear the games is to listen to them on the world wide web through Real Audio. It’s not as if we missed going to an actual game…)
When I was a kid, I never missed baseball this much. Maybe because even as a young fan, I never followed the season quite that closely. Or maybe it’s because there’s no more zealous zealot than the born-again, eh?
In any case, the wait is almost over. And I can hardly stand it. Play Ball!
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