Random Fandom

Back.

I'd been gone for a week, far enough way to have the Diamondbacks' scores in the paper reduced to a one-sentence summary and box scores in their tiny font sizes. While the Diamondbacks agonized through a sweep by the Mets, I was in a much cooler place, drinking beer with friends and watching our kids run around together. We went to museums, to playgrounds; we caught up on jobs, mutual friends, and movie reviews. We ate lots of unhealthy food. We had fun.

In other words, I picked a great time to excuse myself from blogging about this team. (Thanks to Balls, Sticks, and Stuff, who kindly linked to me during the Phillies series -- sorry I provided your readers no analysis, and sorry we brought in the real Diamondbacks to face you guys as opposed to the fake ones we used against the Mets.)

And then on Monday, that same out-of-town newspaper starting using very large font sizes to talk about Hurricane Katrina. As the week has gone on, the stories get increasingly dark and worrisome. I found out that my mom, who had gone to New Orleans with her friend to take her friend's son back to Loyola University, was woken up by the son at 12:30 Saturday night/Sunday morning and told to just get the hell out of town NOW. (The son is still wandering around Louisiana, communication very difficult.) My mother-in-law hasn't heard yet from all her relatives around Biloxi and Gulfport. Her childhood home is almost certainly Not There Anymore. (And, unrelated to all this, I saw a young woman carrying a folded American flag through the airport Tuesday night.)

So I'm finding it hard to muster any enthusiasm for blogging about the Diamondbacks right now. Clearly there are reasons to be excited -- it's September 1, after all, and it's always fun to see the callups (I'm particularly happy that Andy Green will finally make it back up here.) But there are times when the darkness of the outside world exceeds the light that sports provides. For me, for now, that's where I'm at.