My secret plan for the baseball off-season

Okay, I don't handle the end of the baseball season well. It's a crushing, depressing, mind-shattering prospect and the question is always the same: how the hell am I going to get through the long winter months without a single baseball game?

Each year I think I'll flip out. I try to imagine myself getting through the first evening without a game -- and I can't. No baseball games? I'll go mad! I don't sob when I think about it but I come very close. And it's coming! There are only two more weeks to the regular season and then it's on to the short post-season -- and then comes that long, deathly silence that lasts until Spring. No baseball! Horrors!

But this year I have a plan. To stay close to major league baseball, I've decided to have Tommy John surgery during the off-season. Take that, empty TV screen! Oh, it'll be tough for sure. But I'll bet a lot of the regular players will stop by to share their experience, strength and hope with me. Probably Jason Varitek will move in with me for the first few weeks after the surgery, just to be sure I'm okay.

And then of course I'll have a period of intense rehab leading up to Spring Training. I figure I'll do it down in Port St. Lucie, where the Mets train. I think this is a very good plan. I feel positive about it. I will spend the off-season in the heart of baseball!

The doldrum days of the All-Star break

Boy, this absence of regular baseball games during the All-Star break is hard to take. Three days without a baseball game! It's fascinating though, because it provides a peek at the desolate landscape that every baseball fan will have to face when the season ends. Without baseball, the days seem empty!

I recorded games to tide me over during the break. I'm watching one tonight. So I will survive. But whatever will I do when the season actually ends? Every year I pose this question to myself. It's scary thinking of all those months, unleavened by the joy of a baseball game. Oh, the humanity!

So here's the plan. I'm going to record four games that I'll replay throughout the winter whenever I feel too sad to go on with life. I'm going to save one great game involving each of the following teams: the Red Sox, the Mets, the Cubs and the White Sox. I've already saved the Cubs game; all I have to do is snag the other three.

It's not enough, of course. But it's something and I know I'm going to be better off once I possess these games. Still, this brings up a major peeve. Why the hell doesn't MLB show games all year round? I don't get it. They have the games but they don't show them to us! What kind of idiotic thinking is behind this? I'd watch every game that was played during the official season, if they offered them on demand during the winter. Every one! So why don't they do this?

MLB? Are you listening? Are you even there? Oh, I forgot. You're watching the All-Star Game. Guess what? We're not.