Ticket Masters

Today was yet another milestone on the path to Baseball 2009. Every year, the ritual goes something like this:

• Pitchers and catchers report
• Position players report
• Tickets go on sale
• Spring training games begin
• Several rounds of roster cuts
• Final roster is set
  
• Ope ... Openi ... Opening Day arrives (sorry, my fingers tremble with excitement when I try to type that)
  

Trevor Sierra and I engaged in our annual tele-Internet-athon, multitasking our way through landlines, cell phones and virtual waiting rooms in an attempt to secure some two hour and forty-seven minute vacations this summer.

Our final haul included two Cardinals games, a White Sox game, and three others, including some pretty decent seats. Ticket Day is always a double-edged sword, as it is quite glorious in what it presages, but, as Trevor pointed out, it makes it that much more difficult to wait out the next month-and-a-half of sub-freezing temperatures, snow, and a general lack of regular season Cubs baseball. On this day every year, I have the strange taste of hot dog in my mouth (not the taste of strange hot dog, that's quite different), an odd desire to sing the National Anthem, and an inexplicable urge to pay $6.50 for a beer.

But most of all, I know that better days are ahead.