Today is the worst day of the year for me. Well, not for me as a well-rounded human being who has a good job, a good family, and is part of a good community. No, that part of me is doing fine.
Rather, today is the worst day of the year for me as a Phillies fan.
Two things made today so horrible. First, I'm pretty forward thinking in a lot of ways. I like to consider myself an early adopter of different technologies. I've been integrating computers into my life for over three decades now. But, in one way I'm an old man - I get the newspaper every day.
For me living in Philadelphia, that means I get the Inquirer every day. It's no New York Times, not by a long shot. It does, though, give me local news that I need. I probably wouldn't have my job if it weren't for the Inquirer (another story for another day), and I enjoy knowing about what's happening in my community.
I also enjoy reading about the Phillies in real newsprint on real paper while sitting around the breakfast table each morning. Which is why today is such a horrible day - today was the first day since probably early February that there was no Phillies news in the morning paper. It happens every year at some point, but this year it's happened very early. We can thank our completely woeful team for that.
Second, one of the ways that I'm pretty tech savvy is that I rarely watch sporting events live thanks to TiVo. We got our TiVo as a wedding present almost 11 years ago, and there isn't a day that goes by that we don't thank our TiVo for making our lives better. I TiVo every Phillies game, but have the machine record over it when the next game is broadcast. It's an easy way to make sure that there's always the most recent game recorded, and only the most recent game recorded.
The most recent game for the Phillies was Sunday's debacle. Since there was no other game, it just sat there on my TiVo main screen reminding me of the season's futility. I couldn't bear to delete it Monday or Tuesday, but today I had enough - I pressed that delete button and the Phillies 2013 was a thing of the past. That's clearly a good thing given how awful the team was, but it does mean no more Phillies baseball on my DVR.
2013 was miserable for Phillies fans, and it's a relief to most of us that it's over. But it also means that home-team baseball is done for another several months, and today's events just drove that nail home even more.