Hard Times

So you're sat in your living room, three months removed from the World Series and still a full two months away from any meaningful baseball. You've exhausted your somewhat limited library of baseball books, watched Faith Rewarded, Still We Believe and MLB's All-Century Team about a dozen times and are now really starting to feel the full-blown physical symptoms of baseball withdrawal: logging on to MLB.com every morning in the hope of finding something other than an article on Roger Clemens still not knowing what the fuck he's doing in 2007, waking up at 1:05am and jumping out of bed to try to catch a Sox game on the West Coast, even getting excited about the prospect of catching Terrain d'Entente - in French - on TV next week.

All of sudden, you notice an e-mail sitting in your almost-forgotten Hotmail inbox, the one you use pretty much exclusively for MLB.com e-mail, because despite having modified your contact details all over their website, they insist - maybe for sentimental reaons - on sending e-mail to the address you first used to sign up to their services. "Oooh - e-mail from MLB.com! Maybe it's a Spring Training preview. Or a 75% discount in the online store, so I can get me a Trot Nixon jersey and show my support for our dirt dog right fie... Oh shit - I forgot."

So you open the aformentioned e-mail, eager with anticipation. And this is what you read:

U.S. Figure Skating extends a special invitation to MLB.com fans to check out Icenetwork.com's ground-breakingcoverage of the 2007 State Farm U.S. Figure Skating Championships. For the first time ever, fans will get anall-access pass with behind-the-scenes broadband coverageof the Championships, taking place in Spokane, Wash., Jan. 21-28.

If you're guessing that my initial reaction was "WTF???", you'd be about right. If you can ignore the fact that the e-mail arrived on January 26 for something that began on January 21, you still have to wonder what bizarre thoughts went through the mind of the clearly very tired MLB marketing executive who thought that what any self-respecting baseball fan needs to help get through those long, dull winter nights is bloody figure skating (with all due respet to Kristen).

All of a sudden, Fever Pitch - "Le Vol", "La Malédiction du Bambino" and all - doesn't seem such a bad way to spend an evening.

Homesickness

Even though I've lived in France for almost 15 years now, which seems to me to be a fairly clear statement that I quite like the place, people occasionally ask me if I don't secretly long to go back to England's green and pleasant land.

There are things that I miss, outside of the obvious 'family and friends', but they tend to be insignificant little things - fish 'n' chips, Waterstones bookstores, Indian take-away - that don't even come close to adding up to a real desire to return to my native country.

As for the big things, well, I'll let The Guardian enlighten you as to where I might be better off.

Money talks

It doesn't seem all that long ago that the Alfonso Soriano and the Nationals were at loggerheads over Soriano being asked to play the outfield. Now that Soriano has a long-term deal with the Cubs sewn up, it would seem that he has 136 million good reasons to actively volunteer to switch positions.

What a difference a few months' mature reflection make.

No news is...

...the norm, apparently.

In case you'd forgotten in amongst all the non-news of recent days, the Red Sox have some non-news of their own: they've still not reached an agreement over the J.D. Drew deal.

"Combine medical language and legal language into one, and that's what you're up against. Every time there's medical language proposed, it takes a couple of days to decipher it. And then there are discussions back and forth and revisions are made. Both sides are looking for precise language to protect their assets."

Maybe I'm reading too much into the text, but that last sentence is really not something you want to read when your team is about to commit to a 5-year, $70m contract.

With a little bit of luck, the legal and medical people will get so bogged down in their attempts to decipher each other's language that the whole thing will just vanish from the horizon, and Red Sox fans will be spared a collective nervous breakdown between now and Opening Day.

He shoots, he scores!

Hello Iain,

Thanks for traveling with Orbitz. This e-mail confirms the ticket number(s) issued for the "Boston 5/11/ 07" trip.

The "2007 Baseball Desert Five Games In Five Days Spectacular" is no longer merely wishful thinking. Barring disasters, I'll be back at Fenway in May, Spinal Tap-style.

Only another 119 days to go. Not that I'm counting or anything.

If you sell it, they will buy?

Never mind the Hall of Fame elections - I've found a Hall of Fame cap on MLB.com. Ladies and gentlemen, the Baseball Desert is proud to present:

The Pittsburgh Pirates Limited Edition Roberto Clemente
Cashmere Cap w/Carrying Case

With all due respect to the great Roberto Clemente and his family, I have just one question: if you're going to design a cap and sell it for $209.99, shouldn't you at least try to make it something people might actually want to wear? MLB.com should be paying me $200 to wear something that ugly.

I guess there's no accounting for taste.

Stir crazy

Work and holidays have meant that there has been a lot more desert than baseball on here of late. When there have been posts, they have mainly been of the drive-by, "No, I'm not dead" variety.

In my defence, there's not been a lot of baseball to talk about recently. And therein lies my fundamental problem: no baseball. The chaotic end of year prevented me from seeing the baseball-shaped hole that had appeared in my life, but as the New Year has rolled around, the hole has started to get bigger. We recently subscribed to cable, so I've been trying to fill the void with a bit of football (with a little help and guidance from Beth), but I'm not involved enough for it to satisfy me like baseball does. There is also the little matter of not always understanding what's going on, which is a bit of a hindrance in all walks of life, except perhaps politics.

Reading about baseball (the usual suspects - Angell, Boswell, King /O'Nan, Schwartz) is something I always fall back on at this time of year, but after a while it tends to increase the desire to see some real baseball rather than assuage it, and I end up feeling more frustrated than ever.

I wasn't aware of just how thin the ice of sanity on which I'm skating is until earlier this week, when I caught a glimpse of the baseball sequence in Chicken Little. The inside-the-park home run by the film's hero - the only player in baseball history smaller than David Eckstein - had me yelling at the top of my voice like it was Pokey Reese circa 2004 and my daughters looking at me like: "Dad - it's a cartoon chicken. Chill out!"

Being banned from watching the Disney Channel because I'm in danger of waking the neighbours is something I can deal with, but I need a shot of baseball pretty soon, if I'm to avoid turning into a gibbering wreck who sits there like a cross between Leo Mazzone and Rain Man, muttering "Spring Training's coming" 24 hours a day.

HELP!

The drugs don't work

You know how sometimes you have those weird dreams where you wake up in the morning and have a very vivid memory of playing catch with Jason Varitek in your back garden? Well I had one of those moments in the shower this morning. I had a sudden vivid flashback to a bizarre dream last night in which the Red Sox signed a pitcher with one career save - and an 8-13 record last season - to be their new closer. That surely can't be right, can it?

Better late than never

To all those of you who stop by here every now and again: Happy New Year! May 2007 bring health and happiness and whatever else you might wish for.*

On a general Red Sox level, 2006 was not a successful year, but on a personal Red Sox level, it was a great year. I finally made it across the Atlantic and saw not only a bunch of Red Sox games but a bunch of Red Sox bloggers. This blog allows me to stay connected with baseball fans all over the place, but to be able to sit down and talk baseball in a bar in Boston was definitely one of the highlights of the year.

I have tickets lined up for May 13 through May 17 of this year, so my wish for 2007 (outside of the World Series thing) is simple: to be able to put together another trip to New England and re-connect with Red Sox Nation.

*If you're a fan of a baseball team other than the Boston Red Sox, then "whatever else you might wish for" obviously does not cover a World Series title...