A visual representation of my heart during the offseason.

Pitchers and catchers have reported, and whoop-dee-friggin’-doo. Now not only are we forced to live without baseball to watch, but we have to live with the knowledge that baseball is happening somewhere, but nowhere that we get to see. It’s lovely to read the stories that have abounded with the beginning of Spring Training (Tim Lincecum abandoned his mustache crusade), but it’s just another step in the excruciating winter that is the offseason.

With football still over, basketball still boring and my XBOX perpetually on the fritz, I’ve been filling my non-work hours with the calming, intellectual Spartacus: Blood and Sand, a show seemingly intent on seeing how many dead bodies and exposed breasts can be fit into an hour-long show.

But even while Spartacus is about the noblest of competition – gladiatorial combat – it falls victim to the most common problem of such fiction. The series is called Spartacus, so whenever our hero by the same name steps into the arena, it’s a pretty safe bet that he’ll be walking out of it alive before too long.

That’s the problem with even the greatest sports fiction: it’s utterly predictable. Continue reading →