Worst day of the year? Maybe, but what a great year

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

-- Hall of Famer ROGERS HORNSBY

We are the champions.

If the best day of the year for a baseball fan is Opening Day, it's pretty obvious which day is the worst.

It's the day you wake up and realize the World Series is over and there will be no more ballgames that mean anything for five months.

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the ball alone."

It's a shame Bart Giamatti didn't live longer. He had the mind of a philosopher and the soul of a poet.

I have loved baseball longer than most people have been alive.

As a kid in southwestern Ohio, my first favorite team was the Cincinnati Reds. I was overjoyed when they won the National League pennant in 1961, even though all that did was put them in line to be slaughtered by one of the greatest Yankee teams.

I have always been a voracious reader, and I have devoured baseball fiction whenever I could.

I remember the Duane Decker books in the '50s, a series that went position by position through a Yankees-like team called the Blue Sox. I would love to acquire some of them, but even used versions are $150 or more per book.

I read all of Clair Bee's Chip Hilton books and John R. Tunis's books about a fictionalized version of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Whe[n I was a little older and more mature, I discovered Mark Harris's incredible books about Henry Wiggen. When the middle one was made into a movie, "Bang the Drum Slowly" became one of my very favorite films.

Of course I read a lot of non-fiction as well, and one of the highlights of the early part of my sportswriting career was the three hours I spent in April 1983 in my kitchen talking with the great Roger Kahn while he drank most of a fifth of my vodka to keep away the cold.

My goal was always to cover a major league team as a traveling beat writer, and while that never happened, I did spend the 1990 and 1991 seasons covering all the Dodgers' home games.

Half a loaf, I suppose.

In 1995, I did cover all the games -- home and away -- of a baseball team, but it was the Class A Rancho Cucamonga Quakes of the California League.

I saw the rarest play in baseball that season -- an unassisted triple play. Runners on first and second, no outs. Batter hits a low line drive up the middle on a hit-and-run play.

Second baseman spears the line drive for one out, steps on second for the second out and tags the runner coming in from first for the third out.

Most baseball fans have never seen that in person.

Today is the day after another season has ended. As bad as that is, this season was something special. It ended last night in Houston with the team I care about the most -- the Washington Nationals -- winning the World Series for the first time in franchise history.

Not just winning, either. Fighting hard after a slow start to get to the playoffs and then coming from behind time and time again to stave off elimination and win.

Some wonderful memories to savor as I stare out the window this winter and wait for spring.