What is this, week three?
We’ve definitely reached the point where the days start to blend together, with nothing to differentiate between a Wednesday or a Sunday.
SNL returned this week, and it wasn’t awful. That at least made it clear it was Saturday, which was good, as we didn’t start cooking Easter dinner on the wrong day.
In the meantime, we’re starting to get a good sense of whether we’ve chosen our mates wisely. A meme I saw on Facebook this morning summed it up pretty well:
“I told my wife this weekend ‘at least I’m quarantined with someone I enjoy.’ She replied, ‘It must be nice.’”
In fairness, here we’ve managed pretty well. Both of us have spent extensive periods working from home prior to this, so we’ve adjusted pretty well. We work, we walk the pups, we make dinner, and we watch something in the evenings.
I can’t say I’ve gotten much reading in, at least book-wise, but I have enjoyed diving back into my music collection with gusto.
And when I’m not doing all that, I’m filling my free time with a baseball management game.
I was never a big fan of the games where you were the batter or the pitcher, I always much preferred the ones where you acted as manager and GM. It started back in the 80s with Micro League Baseball on the computer, and when not on the computer, the old card-and-dice Strat-O-Matic.
Through the decades there have been a progression of such games, and all-time fantasy baseball leagues, yet in recent years I had strayed. But in the absence of real baseball, my mind wandered back to those games of yore.
A couple of simulations being run by baseball-reference.com and the aforementioned Strat-O-Matic also piqued my interest. An ad on my Facebook feed for Out of the Park baseball was the decider, and I pulled the trigger.
My league of choice is a 20-team circuit of all Phillies players, with a player pool drawn from 1890-2019 and a fantasy draft that makes it possible for a team to have a murderer’s row of Jim Thome, Johnny Callison and Del Ennis.
Not my team, of course.
You see, the problem with being a Philadelphia sports fan is you develop a tendency to fill your roster with players similar to those you grew up watching.
In the case of the Phillies, that often means once-greats well past their prime, guys who had “one great season,” can’t-miss prospects who missed by a mile and toolsy, .240-hitting middle infielders best suited to a AAA roster.
And, the inside joke with me, no matter what the game, I build a team based on that blueprint.
Heck, you might as well do it right.
As the days become ever more spring-like, the chill in the air fades and is replaced by the warm sun and soft winds we’ve waited for all winter, it becomes harder and harder to accept those grand cathedrals to the ‘boys of summer’ stand empty.
For a little while, as I listen to the ambient sounds of the game emanating from my computer speakers, I’m simultaneously transported to both the ballpark and those innocent days of youth before something like our current situation was even imaginable.
Sure, it may be a little goofy, but we all have our vices. As far as vices go, this one is fairly harmless. I won’t judge yours if you don’t judge mine. Whatever you need to get through. We’re all in this together.
We’ve definitely reached the point where the days start to blend together, with nothing to differentiate between a Wednesday or a Sunday.
SNL returned this week, and it wasn’t awful. That at least made it clear it was Saturday, which was good, as we didn’t start cooking Easter dinner on the wrong day.
In the meantime, we’re starting to get a good sense of whether we’ve chosen our mates wisely. A meme I saw on Facebook this morning summed it up pretty well:
“I told my wife this weekend ‘at least I’m quarantined with someone I enjoy.’ She replied, ‘It must be nice.’”
In fairness, here we’ve managed pretty well. Both of us have spent extensive periods working from home prior to this, so we’ve adjusted pretty well. We work, we walk the pups, we make dinner, and we watch something in the evenings.
I can’t say I’ve gotten much reading in, at least book-wise, but I have enjoyed diving back into my music collection with gusto.
And when I’m not doing all that, I’m filling my free time with a baseball management game.
I was never a big fan of the games where you were the batter or the pitcher, I always much preferred the ones where you acted as manager and GM. It started back in the 80s with Micro League Baseball on the computer, and when not on the computer, the old card-and-dice Strat-O-Matic.
Through the decades there have been a progression of such games, and all-time fantasy baseball leagues, yet in recent years I had strayed. But in the absence of real baseball, my mind wandered back to those games of yore.
A couple of simulations being run by baseball-reference.com and the aforementioned Strat-O-Matic also piqued my interest. An ad on my Facebook feed for Out of the Park baseball was the decider, and I pulled the trigger.
My league of choice is a 20-team circuit of all Phillies players, with a player pool drawn from 1890-2019 and a fantasy draft that makes it possible for a team to have a murderer’s row of Jim Thome, Johnny Callison and Del Ennis.
Not my team, of course.
You see, the problem with being a Philadelphia sports fan is you develop a tendency to fill your roster with players similar to those you grew up watching.
In the case of the Phillies, that often means once-greats well past their prime, guys who had “one great season,” can’t-miss prospects who missed by a mile and toolsy, .240-hitting middle infielders best suited to a AAA roster.
And, the inside joke with me, no matter what the game, I build a team based on that blueprint.
Heck, you might as well do it right.
As the days become ever more spring-like, the chill in the air fades and is replaced by the warm sun and soft winds we’ve waited for all winter, it becomes harder and harder to accept those grand cathedrals to the ‘boys of summer’ stand empty.
For a little while, as I listen to the ambient sounds of the game emanating from my computer speakers, I’m simultaneously transported to both the ballpark and those innocent days of youth before something like our current situation was even imaginable.
Sure, it may be a little goofy, but we all have our vices. As far as vices go, this one is fairly harmless. I won’t judge yours if you don’t judge mine. Whatever you need to get through. We’re all in this together.
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