Movies supplanted by sports

Many of you reading this are not sports fans.

In fact, an argument could be made that you're movie fans because you're not sports fans, although that would get into questionable territory -- why attribute a beautiful passion to an absence elsewhere in your life? I'm sure some of you never wanted to be sports fans in the first place.

I, however, go both ways. I love movies and I love sports.

And right now, it's time for sports.

Every March, my cinematic focus wanders. In part, that has to do with a natural lull in the movie schedule. The Oscars are done, but the new movie year hasn't really ramped up yet. Sure, there have been one or two new releases worth watching, but on the whole, it's a quiet time of the year for movies.

That works out well, because I'm very focused on baseball and basketball right now. In fact, you could say, obsessively focused.

Which is why I am illustrating this post with a poster for a movie I hate. Even though I think it's a piss-poor movie, Fever Pitch is a pretty good visual representation of the sports-related fever I've got right now. (And yes, it kills me to say such negative things about Fever Pitch, because I'm a Boston Red Sox fan. Shoulda made a better movie, Farrellys.)

Only two-thirds of that fever is related to the upcoming baseball season, however. Here's a complete breakdown of where I'm devoting my mind at the moment:

1) Agonizing over my picks in college basketball's annual tournament, known as March Madness. The first four days of action concluded on Sunday night. I'm still in contention in my pool. A lot of things have to break right for me, but I'm still in it. And oh yeah, I'm also running the pool. So that involved a lot of collecting of money and other logistics.

2) Prepping for my fantasy baseball draft, which begins online at 4 o'clock my time on Thursday. In fact, I'm coming in an hour early that day, just so I can get off by 2:30 and have plenty of time to get ready. In the meantime, I'm scouring baseball websites and reading fantasy baseball magazines.

3) Researching my team for other fantasy baseball league, which is called the Home Run Derby. This involves compiling a team of ten baseball players, according to certain criteria, and following their home run exploits over the course of the season, to put it in its simplest terms. I actually run the thing, so not only am I brainstorming my own lineup, but I'm sending regular communications to the rest of the league, and collecting money here as well. And since this could involve some 80 participants, it's a big job.

So yeah. The little part of my brain that's usually devoted to thinking up blog posts is now devoted to three-pointers, earned run averages and stolen bases. And will be for a bit longer. In fact, throw in the NBA playoffs (which begin in about a month), and my sports focus will remain fairly intense until at least mid-June. Not as intense as now, but still intense.

So if my posting frequency slips from regular to sporadic until early April, you know why. My brain's storms are devoted to sports right now, not to movies.

And on that note ... back to sports.