We have a smart television now. We were content to hobble along with our clumsy, fat old set despite its obvious limitations but our son took mercy on either us or it a while back and bought us one of the slim ones with the huge screen so we could count Joe Buck’s nose hairs. It is mostly resting now since the 2020 World Series ended but we do use it for watching movies or old episodes of Fargo or some such streaming stuff. My smart TV thinks I live in Tulsa. I don’t want to give too much away but from where I live you can’t drive to Tulsa in one day. Still, it’s kind of fun to get Oklahoma regional news headlines and comforting to know that other areas of this great land of ours have the same prominent issues, like where to get the best rate on your next “re-fi” or what the governor is pretending to know about the pandemic.

So I hate to be the one to break the news to you all ( all of the news appears to be breaking these days) but there isn’t going to be any baseball to play or watch or talk about this coming season. I know, everyone is pretending that it’s all going to be okay and MLB network and ESPN and all the usual sources are going through the motions of announcing the signing of free agents or the speculation about trade possibilities and pennant predictions, but, come on, it ain’t gonna be. And, really, that’s okay because we all have some serious stuff to pay attention to that cardboard cutouts and fake crowd noise isn’t going to relieve us from this time. Not that we don’t need diversions, but the money men are not going to put up with another faux season that doesn’t pay the bills. The San Francisco Giants just guaranteed $6 million for next season to a right handed pitcher who had a 7.22 earned run average last season and, even though they are owned by a consortium of people wealthier than most of us can imagine, you don’t accumulate wealth of any magnitude by throwing cash around carelessly unless you are seriously running for president.

Can we get along without the exploits of Mike Trout and Cody Bellinger and George Springer until further notice? I think we are about to find out the answer to that. Will we be shaken to our cores minus the double guessing of Aaron Boone and Joe Maddon? Apparently the NFL and the NBA are staggering forward as well although I barely pay attention. It’s hard to imagine contact sports and portable morgues co-existing much longer.

We will, many of us who are sick or not sick, still have a lot of extra time on our hands and eyes and ears. So, without baseball (okay, other sports too), what will we do? Well, besides our smart televisions and other appliances, we have Social Media. Let’s face it, though, faceschnook, twitter, and all of that other crap are getting a bit long in the tooth. We need something fresh and, without baseball, I need another avocation. I am taking steps to compete with those antiquated outfits that sell too many ads, invade too much privacy, and are owned by far too wealthy people. No, we are going to be different. There will be a strict limitation on photos. There will be no pictures at all of whatever you just had to eat. You might think that it’s cool, but none of the rest of us gives a damn. There will be absolutely no photos of cats doing anything at all. Take your cats and shove them to faceschnook. I think, after a few years of social media monitoring, that I know what people really want from them. What we want is to spew hostility, because we really feel a lot of it. We are mad and we are not going to take it anymore. Let it all hang out and, don’t worry, there will be no algorithm. We’ll have Al Gore Rhythm, which means no rhythm at all. No one will keep track of anything you do. We’ll just have an annual membership fee. There, I feel better already. I will call it Some Hostile Information Today To You. Yeah, that’s good. So long, See you on S.H.I.T.T.Y.