Begging for a day off.

Imagine it's the dead of summer and you've just caught all 17 innings of an intense, adrenaline-packed, draining ballgame, a war in which momentum shifted back and forth a thousand times. Runners left on base by both teams in seemingly every extra frame, sometimes in scoring position, until finally your team walked off with a dramatic win, obscuring all the second-guesses that had built up while the outcome hung in the balance. As the euphoria of the win wore off, you started to feel the physical toll that the game took on you.

And then you had depositions the next morning.

Wait.

Oh, never mind.

I'm invoking the Newberg Report equivalent of a day-game-after-a-night-game, and writing myself out of the lineup this morning. I've got plenty to say about the Eric Gagné trade, but I'm going to wait a day to do it.

Now watch Sammy Sosa decide after a particularly satisfying lunch that he's going to pack his bags and stroll off into the sunset, personally jetting out to Fresno to pick up Jason Botts and deliver him to the visitors' clubhouse in Cleveland. That will be my punishment (gladly accepted) for postponing my Gagné report by a day.

I really do have depositions.

Catch you tomorrow.


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