Suffering Through the Year's Worst Sports Month

I’ve long held the belief that February is the world’s most irrelevant month.

It’s really short and nothing of any consequence happens during it.

This February is even worse, because it’s a leap year; there’s an extra day of February pointlessness to grind through. Oh, happy day.

My belief is that both January and March should be 45 days, and February should just be eliminated from the calendar entirely; this way, you can preserve all the things that need to be preserved (Black History Month can be in January, and both MLK and Presidents' days can stay on the calendar).

The lack of interesting things in February is pointed up most, um, pointedly by Geoff Baker’s excellent Mariners blog. Every day now, he’s had pictures and video of the team reporting, doing drills, and whatnot; it’s cool to look at but it’s unbelievably annoying as well.

It’s annoying because we’re so close to having actual baseball, and yet it’s still a ways away—these last two weeks of February have to be the slowest time on the whole sports calendar.

There are baseball-related things going on in Arizona and Florida, but in a lot of ways, it’s like looking through the Sears' Wish Book toy section before Christmas—you can see where all the goodness is, you can even see WHAT the goodness is, and you know what you want—you just don’t have access to it yet.

And man oh man, is that frustrating. All I want is to turn on the TV and hear the Frick Award-winning Dave Niehaus (Congrats, Dave!) say “Hello, friends,” because then I’ll know the world is spinning again, and that spring has arrived.

Until then, I’ll be over here in the corner, cursing the short days and cold nights, and counting the days until I go to Arizona myself.

That would be 17.