What's that thing you want most, first thing in the morning? Well, besides coffee, if you're a java junkie like me, and need to grind and wait for your home brew. Better still, what is it you need and want with your cuppajoe? That's right, box scores. What's the start of a day without box scores? It's baseball season, and you have needs.
Now, I admit, I'm evil, because I've always preferred hard copy for such rituals. So, if the scorekeeper in the sky's a tree, I'll have more than just my library to apologize for. But I'm honest with myself as far as my ideas of happiness: I want to have the previous day's boxes in hand, all of them visible on a printed page, to take a note or two as the caffeine boils my noodle to the point that things start to stick. But let's face it, the newspaper's full of needless junk that makes it a needless expense: cartoonish reductionist dichotomies on issues, astrology, animatronic Landers advice on how to handle being snubbed by insolent store clerks, Garfield. Who needs that junk? Unless you've got a fireplace, it's needless clutter. So I've done without printed boxes. For years, yet always feeling their absence.
Until now. I can now happily resume prodigious personal paper consumption thanks to our new compadres at Heater, because I only just became aware that they do a daily PDF of the previous day's box scores and stats. You can see an example of what they put in your in box here: www.heatermagazine.com/
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I noticed the Heater version also omits pitch counts. It's something I've grown accustomed to look for. Perhaps CK can nudge them for this minor improvement.