As the New York Jets begin their off season, the sports landscape goes into a bit of a doldrum for this poet. Sure, there is the Winter Olympics, but there is no doubt that NBC will manage to suck all of the fun out of such exciting sports as curling and the biathlon.

Some might think of basketball as the great outlet for the nomadic sports fan. However, as far as college goes, there is March Madness, and then, well, there isn’t much else. The NBA can be exciting, especially when you are a Lakers fan such as yours truly. But, considering games of import aren’t really even played until April, there just is not that much appeal.

This leaves us with baseball. America’s pastime. Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, Major League and all those other great movies. Casey at the Bat was my favorite poem for the longest time. Okay, so perhaps it still is.

Baseball is a marvelously relaxing cerebral sport in so many ways. Yet, the game in its essence is easy to pick up. Explainging baseball to somebody from England is much easier to do than explaining American football.

But lets be even more honest about the situation. There is no better way to tell the civic pride a city has than by how it feels about its baseball team. So it is with this spirit in mind that I slouch my way through the next few weeks, waiting for pitchers and catchers to report, and The Boys of Summer to take the field.