The Winter

Oh. I have a baseball blog. I forgot, apparently.

I woke up this morning with some sort of icky-sinus-general-malaise thing. In between naps I began to form a pathetic excuse for a blog post in my head that would catch up everything in between my last entry’s eternal hope and now, the day after Christmas. I came to WordPress and logged in, and found a draft that I never published. Here it is:

Nothing to say about baseball, but this.

“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.” – Bart Giamatti.

It was last edited on October 16th, the day after the Tigers were eliminated from the playoffs in that joke of a 15-5 loss to the Rangers. So, yeah.

From what other people say, this year’s World Series was a good one. I watched at least a little of every game, my heart not really in it, vaguely rooting for the Rangers. I’m not one to stay bitter for long, especially if my team’s loss was well-deserved, so to speak. The Rangers played better than the Tigers overall, plain and simple. And then they didn’t. It was hard witnessing the heartbreak of so many friends who are big Rangers fans, for the second year in a row.  I go all in when I love something; a person, a sport, a band. And I tend to surround myself with people who do the same. After this year’s second place finish, one friend even put himself in therapy – no joke. He’s doing better now.

So what’s been going on since then? I made a trip up to Dallas for the Winter Meetings. I meant to write about that here, or at least mention it before I went, but I guess I just never got around to it. I did write about the experience over at Bless You Boys (here and here). I shouldn’t have been surprised that the Tigers chose the year I went to do almost nothing during the Meetings, and then once they signed someone (Dotel), they did so while I was on a plane going home. Most of the big deals occurred right about then, actually, not that there would have been much fanfare had I been around for it. Just some more buzz amongst those in attendance, writers running for the media room, etc.

I’m unsure if I’ll make it to spring training at all next year, but I’m starting to get antsy for mid-February. After the stress of the playoffs I was actually happy baseball was done, at least for a little while. I slept a lot. On the whole, this offseason has seemed kind of blah to me. Maybe it’s because the Tigers haven’t done much. I didn’t really think they needed to, but I can’t help but be left with a bit of an underwhelmed feeling. Besides the Pujols sweepstakes, I get the impression other people feel the same way. Here’s hoping this just means the 2012 season will be amazing all around baseball. I’m just about ready for it.