A day of rest to depress

Today is an eerie precursor to that dreadful, sinking feeling we all get once the Fall Classic concludes and we are faced with only one cold fact: no more baseball.

Yesterday, all thirty teams played their final regular season game of the year at roughly the same minute -- ostensibly to prevent gamblers from persuading players to perform dishonestly or something like that -- which enabled me to watch four games simultaneously on a single computer screen, while tracking my fantasy team unexpectedly capture the championship trophy for the second time in three years. We even had baseball practice in the cold wetness of Copenhagen's grass fields. It was a good day.

But today it pissed down all day and killed my poor cannabis plants. It was too windy and wet to bother trying to save them -- covering them up would only hasten their demise, as the mold grows too fast to fight here at sea-level -- so I watched that new Grateful Dead documentary instead: Long Strange Trip.

And therein lies the concept linking both the interminable quality of a baseball season and the bizarre fascination with fantasy baseball (a hallucination) which often seems more real than the "on-field product" sold and distributed by mlb (and dutifully performed by its christian-player-products).

A bunch of other horrible stuff is going on in the world at the moment to add to today's depression: mass shootings, mass ethnic deportations, a president continuing to exacerbate institutionalized racism, climate catastrophes caused by humans who reject their own involvement, and so on.

Baseball is a distraction from all that. As is the Grateful Dead. They both share many qualities, the Dead and baseball, such as a wistful longing for simpler lifestyles based on play and fun, the sense of a community supporting a group both adored and akin to themselves (I could play second base for the A's! Jerry seems like a kindred spirit!), the promise of an alternative reality of belonging, and that strange amalgamation of the sacred and profane, of becoming a religion, but one that has a healthy sense of humor.

The road to the fantasy baseball trophy is also a long strange trip. You gotta be dedicated and zealous and shrewd or you might end up a half-game back of the standings and miss out on the playoffs; all because you had to attend some damn wedding or birthday or funeral and forgot to set your lineup. Persistence pays off, just like the Grateful Dead will tell ya.

But today is shomer-fucking-shabbas. A day of rest. And in that Grateful Dead documentary, Jerry Garcia's daughter laments about her father: "I just wish he would've fucking rested"

Rest up, dear readers: the Rockies play post-season baseball tomorrow night!