People ask me what I do in the winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring. -- Rogers Hornsby

With less than a month now until I hop on the last plane to glory, I should be thinking about conversions (voltage, currency, etc.) and just how heavy is 50 pounds of baggage anyway. What is the foremost thought in my head though? A: If Homer Bailey doesn't get a major league start this year, can the Reds' front office really label itself as "committed to winning" with a straight face? Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training 10 days before I leave. The first full team workouts happen five days later and I'll miss the start of the Reds' first Spring Training game by less than 23 hours. This is certainly not enough to tide me over for five months.

In Germany, like the rest of the world (in case you were living under a rock for last year's World Cup), Fußball (football) is king despite the efforts of the NFL to sell people on the "amerikanischer" variant. As I understand it, German baseball (if it exists at all) is a furtive underground movement, really more akin to a resistance organization, constantly at risk of being uncovered and wiped out by Soccer Hooligan Shock Troops. Games are played in sprawling subterranean catacombs carved out of bedrock. If you want to watch, you have to arrange to meet a contact who blindfolds you and leads you to the secret entrance behind a fireplace (of course there's a candelabra you have to pull to access the spiral staircase). The prize in the Cracker Jacks is a false tooth full of cyanide in case you're captured.

German baseball definitely wouldn't be the same though. I have a deep emotional investment in the Reds; at the very first "mixer" or dance or whatever I went to in 8th grade, I brought a radio and sat on the bleachers listening to the Reds demonstrate to the Cubs the kind of grandiose, improbable comeback they were so famous for in 1999 (I will find you some day, Al Leiter! You miserable, craven hellspawn!). I believe this made my father think I was gay. I plan to subscribe to Major League Baseball's Gameday Audio service, which is surpisingly cheap. I can see it already, sitting up at night, waiting for the 1:05am local time first pitch, Marty Brennaman in the background as I work on my translation late into the night. No one is going to know what the hell to make of me. I really hope though that I don't get ultra culture-shocked and simply retreat into my room listening to baseball all day. Ideally, it will be a nice way to remind me of home and maybe bore some Germans.
That's all I've got for now, so here I go — "rounding third and heading for home".