Only 78 Days until Pitchers and Catchers report

The world of American sports has hit a new low on the scale of inventing stories to get through the boring season (also known as Not-Baseball season). Today on ESPN.com, on Mike and Mike and on Sportscenter, the biggest news is not something that happened last night, not something that happened recently, and not even something that will even come to fruition for over a year and a half. 

The topic of the day is what Lebron James will do when he becomes a free agent in the summer of 2010. Let me repeat that last part: in the summer of 2010.

Now this is ridiculous. Yes, the Cavs did play the Knicks in Madison Square Garden last night. Yes, that is where many people speculate that Lebron will go (they even made two trades in the past few days to clear cap space for a possible free agent signing over 500 days from now). Yes, the possibility that he will leave his hometown Cavaliers for a bigger market is an interesting one (why not bring him to the most successful franchise in NBA history). But it shows more about what this season lacks that this is the top story, than about how great a story it is. 

This is not something that I know how to fix. It is like there are no games going on that matter during the week. Why can’t the big story be the continuing fallibility of the BCS, where Ball State ran their record to 12-0 but still have no shot at even competing for a national championship. In any other sport, no matter what conference you are in, if you win all of your games you will at least get a shot to compete for a title. Are we punishing these kids for something or is this just an impossibly stupid system?  Why not talk about Junichi Tazawa, who will begin to be a factor  in games at about the same time that Lebron becomes a free agent, but has an impact on the way that the Majors and the Japanese leagues do business today. 

Or why not talk about the fact that the Boston Red Sox (God’s favorite baseball team) released their 2009 spring training schedule yesterday? Thats right, there is an end to our suffering in sight and it is earlier than we thought. Pitchers and catchers will be arriving in Fort Myers on February 12th (6 days ealrier than I had predicted). The early date is due to the second World Baseball Classic, which means that not only do we get to see the Sox start spring training games on Feb 25th, but we get to watch meaningful baseball halfway through March. 

More on the Sox as the week progresses, but tonight the Bruins and Celtics both return to play atop their respective divisions and playing as well as anybody could have imagined. So enjoy those games, relax and make stomach space for tomorrows turkey/football/annoying family-fest and remember to keep counting. 

Go Sox.

 78 Days. 

Done.