By The Numbers: What Do We Do Now That Baseball Season Is Over?
By Father Gabe Costa
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I guess perfect storms do exist.
And, as we are in the midst of Hurricane (Tropical Storm?) Sandy, we are also dealing with another reality: Major League Baseball has gone away until next year.
When Miguel Cabrera took strike three from Sergio Romo at Comerica Park late on Sunday night, the World Series was completed. The National Pastime was immediately suspended, as happens every fall until pitchers and catchers return next spring.
So now what?
Well, we can…
- Look back and review the season
- Bemoan the playoffs, if you are a Yankees fan
- Analyze the World Series
- Read and reread classic books on baseball
- Watch old baseball films and videos
- Brush up on sabermetrics
- Call into talk-radio shows
- Play Apba and Strat-O-Matic baseball
- Get lost in an ocean of baseball websites
- Interact with anybody else who is into the Hot Stove League
- Do what Rogers Hornsby claimed he did at the end of every baseball season: sit down…look outside…watch the winter unfold…wait for the spring
In many ways, this is a time of mourning. And I would like to close this little dirge by recalling the words of an intellectual giant, a man of letters rather than numbers -- Dr. A. Bartlett Giamatti.
Giamatti was the president of both Yale University and the National League. He died at the untimely age of 51 in 1989, while serving as the commissioner of Major League Baseball.
"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.
The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again,
and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings,
and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and
leaves you to face the fall alone."
- Dr. A. Bartlett Giamatti
