Winter baseball—no, no, not the Puerto Rican league, I’m talking about the practice of baseball related activity in the off season. You know, that’s the process of scouring newspapers and now, the Internet for anything related to baseball.

Speaking of the Internet, years ago, when I was a kid, there was no such thing. There were no TV channels dedicated to baseball teams. There were no channels dedicated to sports for that matter. Once the season ended, the diehards suffered through the cold months (at least in the northeast) hoping for something, anything, in the daily papers reporting on baseball.

If you were lucky, you might find a single paragraph devoted to the sport. More often than not however, there would be nothing earth shattering in the article. Baseball articles in the winter were generally found in the Sunday papers. There might be one devoted to the Mets and one for the Yankees. But other than that, there were not many sources of information.

Back then, during the sixties and seventies, I think I watched football just for the chance to see the ball fields where the game I love so dearly, baseball, was played. Unlike today, most baseball stadiums were used for football too. And the infield dirt was not covered up. I always thought it was cool when the NFL warriors were doing battle with the ball marked on the pitchers mound or a tackle was made at home plate. There was nothing like the traditional Lions game at Tiger Stadium on Thanksgiving. The game was usually played in horrendous condition but it was played on a baseball field. That’s all changed now.

The lack of baseball information during the winter made the arrival of ballplayers and the articles telling about them that much more anticipated. There was nothing like opening up the New York Daily News in the middle of February and seeing Mets players in their uniforms with palm trees in the background. At that point you knew the summer game wasn’t that far away.

Those days are gone. Today, at least in New York and some other cities, baseball has become a twelve month a year sport. I now take Mets Classics on SNY for granted. If there was something like that on the TV when I was fourteen years old, I would have been ecstatic. We have hot stove shows for both the Mets and Yankees on their respective networks. Sports nightly highlight shows always have a story or two on baseball. And of course we have the Internet.

The web has given fans access to baseball 24-7, 365 days a year. There are countless web sites and blogs to peruse and keep your baseball fix going through the holiday season and the winter months that follow. With the internet, you can actually follow baseball played in the Caribbean. Why, it has even helped me improve my Spanish.

Then of course there are the winter meetings that begin this Sunday evening in Las Vegas, Nevada. This coming week will be baseball’s biggest of the off season. We will hear stories and rumors daily about what free agent is signing with whom and who is being traded where. Most of what we hear will be rumor and hearsay. Some will predict a busy week but nothing will happen. Others will predict quiet meetings then block busters will prevail. The point is, the winter meetings are very unpredictable.

Whether the Mets sign K-Rod, Orlando Hudson, or Manny Ramirez is not that important. The real exciting thing is that for four days next week, baseball will dominate the sports headlines. And for that, all of us diehard baseball fans should be grateful. Play ball! (or at least talk about it)