Fifty-three. Fifty. Three. Fifty-three days without baseball. I mean that’s an accomplishment. Now there are only sixty-*mumble, mumble, grrr* days left until Spring Training games begin. Yikes! It’s kind of like catching a glimpse of the clock during the middle of an especially punishing work out and realizing, Yay! This is almost half over…shortly followed by, Crap! I have more than half of this left to go.

I mean, I’m doing okay right now. Really. It’s not like I’m going stir crazy or anything. It’s the holidays. Christmas and New Year’s are easily my favorite offseason times of the year. And preparing for the holidays provides a never ending array of exciting distractions that completely…well, almost…okay kind of cover up the fact that Hot Stove goings on and random bits of news and rumors are great and all, but they don’t really fill the void so much as tease and remind one what one is missing.

Speaking of hot stoves:

One of the main holiday distractions in my house is candy making. The habit started a few years ago when we were really, really broke and still needed something to give everyone for Christmas. But it turns out that we’re pretty good at it, even to the point of starting to make up our own recipes, and folks who know us out right ask for it every year. Score!

And there’s the added bonus that it is really, really distracting. When you spend every evening for a week, most of the weekend and then some boiling sugar, melting chocolate, wrapping caramels, slicing marshmallows, etc. and packing it all up to look pretty, you completely forget about missing baseball! …well, almost forget…kind of forg…yeah, you don’t actually forget at all. But you do have fun and reach the practical conclusion that if a game were on, you wouldn’t have time to watch it and that that fact would make you even more sad.

Okay, I lied earlier. I am stir crazy. I think I may even be starting to crack up just a little bit. The candy making has gotten a little, well…  Tell me. Is this the product of a well mind? I think not:

Help me MLBN. You’re my only hope. Air a game. Any game. I don’t care what game! Or marshmallow baseball peeps cannot be far behind!

…Hmmmm…baseball peeps. You know, it’s not like it’s terribly hard to improvise a round cookie cutter. In fact, come to think of it, I have biscuit cutters. And I could paint on the stitches…Yikes!! MLBN, put a game on already! 😉