Dog Days of Winter
We are now firmly immersed in "that time of year". The period of time between the end of the holiday season up until the day pitchers and catchers report to spring training. This is the baseball equivalent of the dead zone.
In this day and age, the hot stove season usually heats up right at the conclusion of the World Series and maintains momentum until the end of the year, but things cool down considerably in January and February. In past years there have been some big splashes in those months, but they have been few and far between and not nearly enough of the daily dose of the baseball news that fans covet.
I guess we shouldn't complain about something that entertains us on some level for 10 of the 12 months of the year, but for baseball fans that have grown accustomed to a daily ritual of ingesting news and information, this is the drought season. These fans can be found feverishly bouncing from one website to another, looking for anything and everything related to their team or in a pinch any baseball team. Red Sox fans are disheartened when they check Boston.com or BostonHerald.com and see that the latest articles are still the old ones from last week. At this point it's big news when the Red Sox sign their backup catcher for another year or a rumor arises about acquiring a left handed hitter for the bench.
Most fans have grown tired of all the steroids conversation and have had all they could take of Roger Clemens talk at this point. The non-action and speculation on Johan Santana has also been beaten into the ground. We don't even want to hear about those trade rumors until someone pulls the trigger. It's nice to hear about how Manny is working out hard in Arizona with Youkilis and Pedroia, but it's not enough.
Boston.com may be onto something when it displays the countdown ticker to spring training which at the writing of this article stands at over 20 long days away. The ticker counts down to the second and many baseball fans will be counting the seconds until they once again can sit with their coffee in the morning and read puff pieces about the players or the latest news items from Fort Myers. The first two games of the regular season will take place in Japan with a start time of 6 a.m. So get ready to set your alarms at the end of March.
