Although the hot stove is starting to heat up, the fact remains we are now in one of the colder parts of the off-season. The announcements of award-winner are only just starting, it’s still a few weeks until the winter meetings, and it’s been long enough since the World Series that early parts of baseball withdrawal are starting to set in. It almost makes you want to be like Rogers Hornsby and just stare out the window and wait for spring.
But, there are some ways to beat the off-season blues!
For one, you can watch winter leagues! These include the Arizona Fall League (which still has a few days left before the championship on Nov. 21), the various Latin American Leagues, and the Australian Baseball League. There are also certain international events, such as the Premier 12 tournament that also ends on Nov. 21. Many of these are streamed, and some such as the AFL can be seen occasionally on MLB Network.
In addition, you can always play baseball games! Whether they are video or of the Strat-O-Matic variety, these can provide some nice baseball warmth in the middle of the winter. I, for example, like Out Of The Park Baseball. Speaking of which, keep an eye open over at The Baseball Continuum for another “Breaking OOTP” installment sometime in the near future.
Then there are baseball books. There are plenty of baseball books around, of course, and what to suggest will depend greatly on what your interests are. Look around!
And, finally, there is Baseball Twitter. The best/worst kind of Twitter, where countless people of varying levels of prominence spend the entire winter talking about baseball even when few other people are. Well, when there aren’t arguments over whether a hot dog is a sandwich (for the record, it isn’t, at least in its traditional form).
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LINKS!
The strange case of 600 Chris Denorfia bobbleheads
Owen Watson of FanGraphs looks at the most extreme HRs of 2015
Richard Deitsch on Joe Davis, the man who may replace (if that’s even possible) Vin Scully in the Dodgers booth
Jeff Passan on the hypocrisy of baseball’s marijuana rules
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Next time, I’ll wonder whether the “suck until you are great” model is going to become more common in baseball.
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