Roundtable: What will you do without baseball?

The baseball season is on hold for at least the next month if not more. Here’s how our staff is considering passing the time without baseball:

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Mister Lizzie - I have always claimed that if I didn’t have baseball, I’d probably master Spanish, cultivate a spice garden, and learn to bake bread. Now that this is reality, however, I am simply updating my Netflex queue and obsessively refreshing Twitter... wait are there other options?

JT Morgan - The same thing I do during the winter. Hibernation and catching up on Netflix. Fortunately MLB The Show 20 released last night and I’ll have something to get my baseball fix until players and fans are safely able to compete.

Ashley MacLennan - I’m literally going to bed. Wake me up when baseball is back.

John Ford - There’s a book I started reading a while back called Ballpark by Paul Goldberger. As the title suggests, It’s a history of baseball told through its ballparks. Now maybe I can finish it. More likely though, is I’ll take more naps.

Jared Ward - Probably what I do every season. Get deep into MLB the Show, and think of ridiculous trades that will never happen, but are fun thought experiments. (Here’s how the Rays can get Nolan Arenado) And still work (remotely), and try to work through my endlessly growing book queue.

Adam Sanford - Without baseball, there is certainly a hole in my life at the moment. I had a Disney vacation just spoiled due to the Coronavirus as well, so I am pretty salty currently. In the meantime, I’ve just been doing my usual rounds, you know what the usual person does with their time. First I google the Tampa Bay Rays and Wander Franco; then I go through MLB.com’s video database looking for classic highlights. I move on to YouTube once MLB is unfruitful and find some Devil Rays clips. Is it April May June yet?

Danny Russell -We gonna learn today! Errr this weekend!

You know, if my kids let me...

Brett Rutherford - Every year, OOTP lets me live out my dream of being a big league GM and manager. I’m really excited to see the new features they’ve added this year to a game that already provides an immersive baseball experience. Out of the Park Baseball 21 will be released on March 20, and I’ve already pre-ordered!

Ian Malinowski - Research baseball! Honestly, real baseball is a huge impediment to this. How can I learn how baseball works when there’s actual baseball to watch? My local pitch database is a mess. My scripts to scrape data don’t work. Most of my ideas are only half-baked. I have questions about baseball that I should be able to answer, but can’t. Thank goodness there’s going to be no baseball.

(Yes maybe I could have done a better job getting this stuff ready in the offseason. Stop yelling at me, Danny.)

Darby Robinson - I am a huge movie buff. Without baseball to fill conservatively two and half to three hours per night (oftentimes more with other games after or before the Rays play) that frees up a perfect slot of time for a film! It’s also still quite cold and snowy where I live, so making the mental excuses to stay indoors, snuggle up on the couch as a family (the wife and two cats), and get lost in a movie that can take our minds off the worry and stress of our current time.

As we get close to what would have been Opening Day, if you too pine for baseball but also want to enjoy the very responsible indoor kid activity of watching a movie on the couch, might I suggest one of my absolute favorite baseball films of all time that not nearly enough people have seen: Sugar.