How to Spend the Last 24 Hours Before Spring Training

12 AM--Celebrate by turning calendar page.

1 AM--Attempt to go to sleep. Curl up with nice book, such as The Natural or Field of Dreams, or printouts from a certain blog about...well, you know.

3.30 AM--Finish reading, drift off to sleep. Have baseball related dream in which you eat dinner with Roy Hobbs and some other legendary baseball figure. Steal Hobbs' bat. For the fun of it.

9.00 AM--Wake up. Realize that you don't, in fact, have Roy Hobbs' bat. Mope. Look outside the window and see the #@$@# blizzard of doom. Mope some more.

9.30 AM--Hop in the shower. Play energetic, non-wintery music. Anything with 'Summer' in the title, really. "Summer Lovin", "In the Summertime", "Boys of Summer"...you get the idea.

9.45 AM--Hop out of the shower, get dressed, make sure to leave Yankees' shirt for tomorrow and instead decree that today is the last day until next November that you'll wear a heavy winter sweater, no matter how cold it might be outside.

10.00 AM--Check ESPN, LoHud, PBP...eventually get around to unimportant things such as email and CNN.com.

10.30 AM--Head off to class. If you actually have a job, imagine all of this about two, three hours earlier. Listen to some classic baseball on the way.

12.30 PM--Lunch break. Check all the important websites, decide that you're going to ignore anything remotely connected to the Mitchell Report and instead focus on why the hell the Yankees are starting Joba in the 'pen, even if you know there's a rational explanation.


1.00 PM--Attempt one last-ditch attempt to get plane tickets to Tampa Bay. Realize that the tickets are way, way, way out of your price range.

1.03 PM--Mope.

1.30 PM--Decide to cure your moping by buying two tickets to a random Yankees game on a weeknight in May, when all the kids still have school so there are actual tickets to be had.

1.45 PM--Feel a bit thinner in the wallet, but spiritually richer.

2.30 PM--Get antsy and wonder why the hell the day won't end already.

2.45 PM--Break the copier/printer/lab computer in frustration.

3.30 PM--Log onto LoHud for first time in a few hours and discover that all hell has broken lose because Curt Schilling has announced his sudden retirement and thus the Red Sox have signed some pitcher from Japan that's supposed to be really good. Again.

4.30 PM--Find out by accident that, yes, the hockey teams are still playing, and, yes, the Devils are still a better team than the Rangers and the Islanders.

4.45 PM--Find out that basketball and the tri-state area are kind of like trying to combine oil and water.

5.30 PM--While attempting to drive home, get caught in blinding snowstorm. Repeat mantra: Last day of winter. Om. Last day of winter. Om.

7.00 PM--Finally get home. Check all important websites, discover that ______ has not, in fact, shown up yet in Tampa and get really worried. Find out that ______ has a new hair cut and looks really good, but ______ looks really awful. Start freaking out about prospects of 2008 season.

7.05 PM--Realize that if the entire season is going to be based on someone's haircut, you're in the wrong sport.

7.30 PM--After going out in the blizzard to grill burgers and 'dogs, cozy up to the TV and put it on YES to catch Yankees Classics or whatever it is they've got on.

11.00 PM--Decide watching the news might be slightly beneficial. Discover that _____ has been assassinate/overdosed on prescription drugs/overdosed on nonprescription drugs/had a love affair with a six year-old horse.

11.25 PM--Finally get to sports part of news broadcast and turn it off when they're only talking about the Knicks.

12.00 AM--Turn calendar page again. Pop champagne.


LESS THAN 24 HOURS