Pitchers and catchers reported weeks ago, the WBC Classic has come and gone, and the Holy Regular Season is less than a week away from coming into being. I don’t know about you, but I am really, really looking forward to it.

The new and exciting MLB Network has been an awfully nice offseason fix- for example, when I was a kid, my dad used to talk about what a nut Mark Fidrych was; it was really nice to finally get to see him in action when they replayed a 1976 game in which he pitched the Tigers to a win over the Yankees and made it look effortless.

And the 30 Clubs in 30 Days series of preseason profiles has been great, too. But it’s just not the same.

Today, however, I got my first official sign that it’s safe to stop hibernating: my first postgame update email (if you don’t already get them, sign up here).

It was like the sun came out and the air temperature warmed at least ten degrees.

Adding to my excitement, I found this list of Mets games on XM Radio- as of this writing, there are only like three games listed, but the link should be updated as they sort out their coverage during the Holy Regular Season. I’d imagine the link should stay the same, but if it changes, I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.

A word about XM- I don’t know what MLB charges for in-game audio, or what you get for your money, but XM charges about $8/month ($3/month if you already have XM service) for web access to their streaming content- including what I’m told is all games. To my knowledge, you have to listen to them live and there’s no archive, but don’t quote me on that- this is my first year with XM so I don’t know the ins and outs. But their other programming is excellent, so it’s a pretty decent value as far as I’m concerned.

For the record, I’m just an XM subscriber, not an employee, nor am I affiliated with them in any way. I don’t stand to make a cent if you sign up for service, and the only way I can foresee benefitting from anyone signing up is that the more business they do, the better their service will get.

So there.

I’m actually quite psyched about being able to listen to games at work… until I got XM, I’d have to keep hitting my browser’s refresh button to reload whatever live box scores I was getting. I thought I’d be smart last season, and got a little transistor radio… except I work in an ER, and there was no way in hell an AM signal was getting in here.

Aaaaanyway, I’ll go back to posting with some frequency once the season starts, if that matters to anyone. I’m really optimistic about this year, so hopefully I’ll have a lot of good things to write about.

Let’s Go Mets!

Update: One of the good readers at Metsgeek informed me that MLB (money-loving bastards?) have streaming game broadcasts on lockdown, and that while you can get the games on XM over-the-air, you cannot get them online. Which is disappointing, to be sure, but what can you do about it? Hmm… if enough XM subscribers drop the streaming audio option, citing their frustration with not being able to listen to MLB games, I wonder if XM will try to strongarm MLB into licensing the content to XM.

Meh. I’ll probably never find out.