What a Baseball Fan Does on a Raw November Evening

Sitting around the Hot Stove, waiting for the first shots of Moving Day or the reports of rested pitchers tossing back and forth, every good baseball fan looks for a way to pass the time. Some of the less enlightened throw their passion towards other sports, like football and basketball. Anybody who devotedly follows the NHL is a sports purist in the highest sense of the term, and must be kept out of the company of the formerly mentioned misguided souls. For those of the single-minded nature, how can baseball possibly carry on through the colder months?

1. For the most passive sort of entertainment, you can't beat the package that XM Radio has thrown together. Their MLB Home Plate programming is outstanding in-season and out, covering every pitch as it happens and after the fact. They're at the World Series and winter meetings, and they're in both Arizona and Florida. Their on-air personalities take some getting used to, but are a refreshing change from the self-serving, inflammatory jockeys on the nationally syndicated networks. They just love baseball, and to be honest, they get by far the best guests because the guests know they're not going to be swirled in the scandal pool for 90% of an interview. It's a pleasure to listen to. (Oh yea, and their sponsors only take up 10 minutes of every hour of programming. Take a stopwatch to ESPN Radio or WEEI, and see what the comparison is.)

SITE:
MLB Home Plate

3. The next step would be catching up on all the baseball reading that hasn't been done over the summer. All of the sites listed to your right are highly recommended reads, but if you peruse the local bookstore you'll find some gems as well. Here are a few favorites, some of which you will undoubtedly recognize, others may be new. I'll only name the best, and the titles are linked.

FICTION
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (W. P. Kinsella)
The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (Robert Coover)

NONFICTION
Eight Men Out (Eliot Asinof)
Lardner on Baseball (Ring Lardner)
Spalding's World Tour (Mark Lamster)
In the Best Interests of Baseball? (Andrew Zimbalist)

3. Finally, if you're truly yearning for the thrill and unpredictable up and down excitement of the season, try a little offseason ball. Instead of fantasy, find yourself a copy of Out of the Park Baseball for your computer. You can sim entire seasons or the entire history of the game. Heck, you can create your own league, your own universe and get to be the general manager.

If you're into something a little less disengaged (read: don't like having a mouse click do it all for you), then find a dusty hobby shop and grab a copy of Strat-o-Matic Baseball. I did last fall, and that stuff is addictive, believe you me. It's got all the dice-rolling and number-crunching anyone could every want.

SITES:
Out of the Park Baseball 2007
Strat-o-Matic Baseball 2007

My perfect combination? Read Coover's Universal Baseball Association, grab a copy of Strat or OOTP, and create your own league. The Newton Highlanders are currently fighting for .500 in the inaugural season of the Massachusetts Baseball Society, a little-researched league that buzzed about in the middle of the 19th century.

Have fun.

(Image courtesy of the forum at www.baseball-fever.com)