We’re eight days into the MLB lockout, do you know where your sanity is?

Interviewer: Alright, so Rog, what do-

RH: actually it’s Rogers

Int: oh of course, of course

RH: The Rajah, if you insist on being…familiar

Int: No, no, no, Rogers, wouldn’t dream of it

RH: glowers

Int: Ahem, yes, so Rogers what does your off-season routine look like?

RH: my what?

Int: You know, how do you keep in shape?

RH: I am, yeah

Int:

RH:

Int: when there isn’t baseball, I mean

RH nods seriously: the winter

Int: …right. What do you do then?

RH: oh, I just stare out the window

Int: between sets?

RH: I’d prefer if you left Mrs. Hornsby out of this

Int: in the wintertime. When there is no baseball. What exactly do you do? You mentioned staring out a window?

RH nods sagely: Yessir. Stare out the window and wait for spring

***

We’re 8 days into the lockout. Too many days to into this pandemic. Five days into the week. I’m reading a book about people with incredible songwriting talent, and I’m desperate to create like that. To fill this silence with purpose, to take advantage of a time when my voice could be heard. Instead ideas beat themselves into the walls of my skull like bumblebees against glass. No pain to it - the metaphorical crushing of these ideas, they just wobble back off into the empty space and warble round till there are so many wobbling, warbling bee ideas dazedly flying around that there’s nothing but buzzing.

So now I lie awake in the middles of the nights, playing chicken with my alarm and writing fictitious interviews of long dead baseball players. The house is cleaner than it’s ever been, everything back in its place, and I thought maybe this existential crisis would be the sexy one. You know, where something sweeping and sensational comes out of it, so you look back on that period and pretend it wasn’t as bizarre as it really was. Do the players feel similar ennui? Or have they become successful Stockholm syndrome patients of the Sports Self Help genre. Perhaps that will be my lockout opus: How I Learned to Stop Blogging and Embrace Tired Metaphors?

Anyway, how’s this lockout treating you?