Sox Offenders

For the true fan of the game of baseball, is there anything worse than the month of January? Especially in Boston. Seriously, look around. Do you see anything that has to do with baseball? Snow, bare trees, bundled-up chicks, darkness all around…January is baseball Hell.

We can tolerate the other two “off-months” easier. November finds us in the afterglow of the season just-past. And for the second year out of the last four, it was an afterglow to remember. I’m talking about the hey-did-you-see-the-twin-blondes-I-just-banged kind of afterglow. The days are still occasionally warm, the Hot Stove fires up, and the holidays are bull-rushing us. December rolls in and suddenly it’s all Egg Nog, Christmas parties and Mistletoe belt buckles. Then January arrives, like one long hangover.

I’ll start with the gym, and three of the ugliest words I know: New Year’s Resolution. Suddenly my winter haven for escaping all things non-baseball is gone. All fall and winter, I put on the headphones and rock out to Abba and Van Morrison while trying to feel less than my real age. Now I have to ask the fat chick in Spandex – a size of Spandex that should not exist – if she is done fornicating with the leg press. I have to wait for the dude in cut-off jean shorts, Polo shirt and boat shoes to finish his two mile walk on the treadmill. That’s a 40-minute exercise of self-control for me not to kick his out-of-shape, poorly-dressed ass. They will be gone soon.

Like most people in the free world, I’m broke in January. On-my-ass, cleaned out from excessive holiday spending. The first eight seasons of Murder, She Wrote for Aunt Mabel seemed like a good idea at the time. Now it just seems like a two-hundred-dollar attempt to feel less guilty for calling her Auntie Shitsmell all these years. Who knew she had a Colostomy? And four hundred bucks for the complete set of Pokemon cards for the nephews, just so they could fight over the Pikachu. Finally, the icing on the holiday cake: seven hundred bucks to bail Red out on Christmas Eve for his questionable decision to show his “seasonal meat” selection to the waitress at the bar.

Finally, regarding baseball, there’s nothing. The Hot Stove is shut down. All the GM’s are hunkered down on their private islands in the Caribbean, smoking Cuban cigars and being waited on by scantily-clad hotties who speak no English. We wait. We pass the days, as they get longer a couple of minutes at a time, replaying the 2004 World Series with our action figures until the equipment truck rolls out of Fenway. Then we know. It’s almost time. Spring. And it all begins again.

So that’s how we roll. Take January right off the calendar. Or make it “Victoria’s Secret models come to your office” month. Hand out Red Bull at all the toll booths. Give Remy and DO a reality show set in Provincetown. Just do something to make it go by. Thirty-one days is a lot of friggin’ days. Thankfully, it’s going to be in the fifties in Boston for the next couple of days, which along with a few cold ‘Gansetts, might just get us through.

Red and Denton appear daily at www.survivinggrady.com, do you?