I Used to Love H.E.R.

Yeah, I still visit this piece of internet real estate from time to time. Not as much as I'd like. I held out on the blogging cliche of apologizing for my shoddy lack of effort as long as possible -- who hasn't had an acute case of writer's block or a mountain of impediments to dance around, you know? But winter in Chicago is a harsh mistress. I always forget how dire everything gets when the world outside your window is blanketed in 12 inches of snow, how life suddenly becomes about holding on to your very last bit of energy until the eventual thaw -- and the deep feelings of remorse that accompany that action when the first signs of spring emerge.

You get a little crazy and sometimes, you go the other direction entirely and start to feel invincible. And maybe you sniff at the idea of giving $75 million to an injury prone Magglio Ordonez and watch him catch the bus to Detroit. And you take a long, hard look at Kyle Farnsworth and decide that he's the projection of all of your failures and give him the boot, too. Sometimes nice people -- like Moises Alou -- get hurt, because we live in a society where ageism is an ugly fact of life. And sometimes the culpable get what they deserve, like Sammy Sosa, even though his foul attitude is rooted in your own team's sliding fortunes. It's not even spring yet, but the realization that the Cubs and White Sox will be going at it without Sammy and Magglio in 2005 -- even though they weren't ever my favorite players -- is powerful and hard to shake. Because they've been in Chicago longer than I've been here. We can win without them -- management thinks so, at least -- by remaking ourselves into the Braves and the A's. But we've never felt so mortal.