Closing time

My biological sports clock is telling me something.


After eight months of watching baseball, reading about baseball and editing countless numbers of baseball stories and columns, I am ready for the season to end. More than ready.


It's not the bitter Red Sox fan in me saying this. But Thanksgiving is coming up. I just booked my trip back home for Christmas. The clocks are ready to fall back.


And yet, on October 28th, the World Series is starting.


My instinct tells me the season should be almost over. The World Series should be at Game 5 or 6. The season awards should be coming up and I can finally get a break from five-page baseball columns every single day. But no, the World Series hasn't even begun.


Major league baseball is not a well-oiled machine. We all know this. There should be a salary cap, but there won't. Games should start earlier, but they don't. Games should not go 3 1/2 hours on average, but they do. There should not be off-days in a playoff series when neither team travels, but there are. So who can be surprised that this World Series will go into November?


Back when I was living in the Northeast, I would always start expecting winter to end in mid-March. By then I was always ready not to freeze my ass off just on my walk to the car. By late August I was ready for school. Not excited, but ready. Now in Florida, I'm ready for the 1,000 degree days we get every summer to end by the time we hit late October. (Not much luck in that department this year.)


So the fact that the World Series is only starting today just does not make natural sense. In a few hours, I will head into work knowing I will probably be there for 12 hours without a break, hoping my legs don't calcify from the lack of movement while waiting for our last column to come in at 3 a.m.


I love baseball and I appreciate the fact that something so great is part of my job. But I'm more than ready for the season to end. It's October 28th for crying out loud.