Baseball Homesickness, continued

I'm not gonna lie to you people, it's getting pretty ugly with me.

I think it's because the baseball season ended last year earlier than it has in two years, and now the football season ended earlier than it has in two years, and the double-whammy has me feeling like clawing at my face at this point.

I try hard not to think about baseball. I try not to think, when the fiancee and I are bickering over what to watch--another rerun of CSI or some nature documentary on penguins--for another night, that the entire argument would be moot if it were 7 pm on a night in April or May or June and we could just flip to NESN, no questions necessary. I try not to think about Papi digging in at the plate or how Schilling's going to do this year or if Keith Foulke will be his 2004 self ever again, because it just makes me emit a high-pitched whining sound that irritates everyone in my general vicinity. Except, of course, for the other baseball junkies doing a similar thing.

Flapping my gums around the water cooler about Roger isn't going to scratch the itch (if anything, it just makes me more aggravated, because it's the kind of shit people only really get interested in when there is nothing else to think about). My frequent verbal tussles with a Cubs fan coworker only fan the flames. I've thought about reading some of my Roger Angell books, but have stayed away from that out of fear I might literally cry.

There's a hole in my life right now, and it's called baseball. Not off-season drama or hot stove trade talks, I mean real, actual baseball. The routine--a game every night for the home team, two if you've got the MLB.com hooked up. The lovely rhythm of the Rem-Dawg and Orsillo or Castiglione and co.

I miss the body language of baseball players--the way they fidget with batting gloves or blow air out through their lips slowly waiting for a pitch to be delivered. I miss the way they kick the dirt, all of them, pitchers, batters, outfielders, bored infielders, swipe their feet in the dirt, or stub their toes into it, or dig rivets with their heels, or just brush their cleats back and forth, kicking up dust. I'd give anything right now just to watch one of our new Sox players kick the dirt in the batters' box. I'm sure they do it in a way not quite like the players I'd gotten to know.

I'm so homesick for baseball that I watched Game 6 again on Saturday, just to see the ballplayers moving. I can't get enough of the way baseball players move.

The ten or so days until pitchers and catchers might as well be a decade today.

Comments

[Dan]

Patience grasshopper! ;-)

Soon, very soon.

[peter*]

Yes, soon. Think warm sun and gentle breezes.

[Boston Fan in Michigan]

WBC soon! Stop the agony that is endless college basketball TV coverage. It burns.

[peter*]

College b'ball is pretty damn good when your team is ranked numbah one in the nation!