I miss baseball season

Originally posted on The Dugout Doctors

This time of year always makes me sad. Sure, we’re only midway through the summer, which for most of you is like living in an oven, but I’m in San Diego and the temperature is always ideal. In summer, we get longer ideal days. What’s so sad about that, right?

I’ll tell you why I’m sad: football season is here.

Now, perhaps a larger portion of the readers of The Dugout Doctors understand my plight better than the rest of the country because this is a baseball site. But I’m the type of guy who spends most of the winter longing for baseball season to begin. I get excited when the first tab on ESPN.com is “MLB”.

But if you look now, “MLB” has been bumped by the link to the NFL portion of the site, and the headlines are predominantly football-related. This guy is signing here, that guy signed there. Sign up for fantasy football today!

And oh-by-the-way-we’re-almost-at-the-baseball-trade-deadline.

I play fantasy football just like every other living, breathing organism on Earth, but a small part of me secretly hoped for an NFL lockout. I wanted people to care about all 162 games of the MLB season. Heck, even people in Pittsburgh are in on the action this year, but when (if?) the Pirates inevitably start to slip in the standings it will go virtually unnoticed, thanks to the NFL. And it’s not just Pittsburgh that’ll toss baseball on to the backburner like it was never around to begin with. The San Diego Padres, right here in my own back yard, may as well pack up now. Nobody cares once Phillip Rivers and friends don the Charger blue and gold.

I’ll be clicking all the fantasy football links around the internet soon enough as I scramble to come up with yet another hair-brained draft strategy that won’t work. I’ll be active on the waiver wire and with trades. I’ll lead my team to the playoffs only to choke in the post season, like always.

But right now I miss baseball season, and it’s not even over yet.