The First Sign of Spring

When it comes to sports, nothing compares to baseball for the Glass Man. Once upon a time, when the Knicks were relevant and Sisqo was a chart topper, basketball helped pass the time in the offseason.

More recently, football has become a more reliable diversion. I still don't understand those people, and there are a lot of them, who can sit down on Sunday and watch any two teams in football play a game. But the Giants have been great entertainment in recent years, and I've even gotten in to college football in the last year.

No matter how much progress I've made on the football front, however, it remains, in a sense, just a way to pass the time.

Yesterday's Super Bowl was a great game. Not as good as last year's when the Giants overcame everything to beat the Patriots, but a great game nonetheless.

But then, as soon as it was over, for me it was time again to think of baseball. Time to think of David Wright, Johan, and Jose-Jose-Jose.

Regrettably, I'm still not there entirely with this team. The bullpen moves were great, but I still think we're counting on too many best case scenarios. We're counting on improvement, or at least sustained performance from Mike Pelfrey. We're counting on Carlos Delgado to duplicate his 2008. We're counting on Luis Castillo to bounce back. The list goes on and on.

But last night after the Super Bowl was no time to worry about the question marks. The end of football season is, in a sense, the unofficial start of baseball season. It's the moment when the sports pages go back to being all baseball all the time; when sports talk radio and Sports Nite do the same.

The next couple days they'll dissect the Super Bowl and tell us about the parade. The Knicks and Rangers will get some ink. But mostly it'll be about baseball, and not just the depressing stuff about Shea coming down or the Mets refusing to make a run at Manny Ramirez.

And that's a welcome change.

Now if only we could sign Manny and Ollie, then we'd really be in business.

- A.F.O.M.G.