CONFESSIONS OF A BASEBALL JUNKIE

It's 11:30 p.m. My family is sound asleep. So is the dog. I'm not sure about the cats — I'm never sure about the cats. I'm sitting in my basement, alone, with only the glow of the computer screen illuminating the space around me. And as I do just about every night, I am succumbing to my addiction.

No, I am not surfing porn or gambling away my retirement fund. I'm a baseball junkie, and broadband is my enabler.

Right now, I'm watching Jackie Robinson play baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers a half century after Robinson and his mates cavorted on the hallowed ground that was Ebbets Field, while I listen to two of the greatest announcers of the last century — Mel Allen and Red Barber — describe the action.

Like most addictions, mine started innocently enough: While I was on the Major League Baseball Web site, I discovered I could listen to live radio broadcasts of any game I chose. Yes! John Miller on KBNR in San Francisco. Every night.

It didn't stop there. It never does. I began to crave more, and Major League Baseball was only too happy to give it to me. First came something called Baseball's Best, which allows addicts — er, subscribers — to watch games from baseball's glorious past, including the sixth game of the 1952 World Series (the stage for the aforementioned Mr. Robinson and the rest of the Boys of Summer).

Later, Custom Cuts made its debut. This celebrates baseball's present by allowing me to create customized highlights packages of my favorite teams and players. I like it because it lets me keep up, in a short amount of time, with my beloved Chicago White Sox. (Some addictions are more painful than others.) And it's all made possible thanks to broadband. Sweet, sweet broadband.

When will it end? Probably when I die, because I just know Major League Baseball already is working on something new to keep me hooked.

Of course, I could hope that my family attempts an intervention. But it would never happen. Because when I'm in the basement online watching Carlton Fisk hit the foul pole for the gazillionth time, they at least know where I am — and are comforted by the fact it's not a bar.