I have an odd habit that I developed roughly 25 years ago. I read box scores. Really read ‘em. Read the heck out of ‘em. Pore over every character the way someone with a better mind might pore over Dostoyevsky.
I do this for all teams, but I really do it for the teams I follow. I get to studying those box scores. Really studying them.
The fun part, for me, is seeing the story within the story. Temporarily suspending the fact that there are better ways to measure baseball success than box score stats, there’s something simultaneously joyous and cathartic in seeing how a player performed over two and a half hours placed directly next to how they’ve performed over the course of the season.