Day 73: One down, two to go.
Is it just me, or do you guys feel that? I think it’s the slightest glimmer of hope starting to stir.
I always felt like there are three major milestones between the end of one baseball season, and the beginning of another. Three hurdles that are benchmarks, telling us how far we’ve come and been able to survive since the end of the previous season, and, perhaps more importantly, how close we’re getting to the arrival of next year. For me, the “big three” have been:
1) The Holiday season (one “L”)
2) The Superb*wl
3) March Madness
Getting through the holidays can be tough, ask anyone with in-laws. But, for a hardcore baseball fan who sees the holiday season as “checkpoint 1 of 3”, it can be more difficult than for most getting through them. Fortunately for Cardinals fans, the past few years have been relatively easy for us to get TO the holidays, given the club’s run into deep October in recent seasons. Up next is the big football game, and from what I understand, the playoffs are either already underway, or start this weekend. So, we’re getting closer to that. Soon the only thing standing between us and “Here Comes The King” will be that basketball tournament. In a related story, it’s also the most popular time of year for vasectomy procedures in the United States, if you didn’t know. True story–many urology offices and urological surgeons will run “March Madness specials” where they’ll offer a pizza coupon or something with any procedure done during the March Madness timeframe. Enough people must think, “Might as well have an excuse to not get up off the couch for two or three straight days”.
Enough of that. The Cardinals Winter Warmup will be here soon (next weekend, in fact), and that usually comes right on time. It’s been long enough since we’ve seen live baseball, that just about the time we think we can’t take another day, in swoops the #WWU to give us a baseball shot in the arm to get us through those last few weeks. If you’ve never been, go. It’s good for what ails you.
There’s less time between now and the beginning of the 2014 season than there is time between now and the end of the 2013 season. Stay strong, fans, we’re gonna make it.