I should have asked for Monday off. Better yet, I should have requested the entire week off. It's baseball season, and I can't get enough of it. 

The only disappointing glitch, and it's a small one because I found a work around, is that the Cincinnati Reds' game isn't televised. It's the first time in 8 years, the Reds' Opening Day game won't be broadcast on ESPN or ESPN2.

But as I said, it's a minor detail because I found a work around. For the first week of the season, all the games can be seen on MLB Extra Innings -- FREE. Yes, FREE. (Just putting the word "FREE" in bold makes be feel like I'm watching a late-night informercial for some Ronco product.)

For those that have Bright House networks digital package that's channels 154 through 163. Now I don't know what the channels are if you have DirecTV, but I'll know once I get in the office tonight.

So I encourage you to take the day off Tuesday and Wednesday. Maybe Thursday. Shoot take the rest of the week off. You have my permission. And that's as good as a note from your mom in this case.

My wife is an amazing woman. I talked all Monday about how I wanted to stay up and watch the season opener for Major League Baseball. You know the Red Sox-A's game. The game at the Tokyo Dome in Japan. The one that started at 6 a.m. EST, errrrrr 3 a.m. in Bakersfield.

Don't worry if you missed it. You weren't the only one. Well, I did see a few innings, thanks to my wife.

As I was saying, my wife is an amazing woman. Not only did she record the game on our DVR. But she turned the game on at 3 a.m. after she got up for one of those third trimester wakeup calls. Actually, I left the TV on all night, and she just changed the channel to ESPN2, so I could listen to the game in my sleep. Now, I don't know if she thought I'd be able to see the games in my dreams or soak in the stats through osmosis, but it worked.

Seriously. I heard the second inning of the game in my sleep. I could hear ESPN announcer Gary Thorne's voice as he said Daisuke Matsuzaka struck out Jack Cust to end the inning with the bases loaded. Of course, in my sleep Dice-K had a shutout through six innings. When I woke up that was in fact was fantasy. I blame that on my fantasy baseball team. Dice-K is one of my pitchers, so that was the only reason I wanted to watch the game in the first place.

As a I said, I did wake up to watch Dice-K finally settle down, and the Red Sox take a 3-2 lead in the top of the sixth. Our 18-month-old son started crying around that time (4:15 a.m.), and I went to his room to change him. By the time I'd come back, the A's had taken a 4-3 lead and I decided to call it a night, errrr, early morning.

Unfortunately, my wife couldn't back to sleep because of the TV and our son. So while I went back to sleep, she paid for my selfishness.

The Red Sox and A's play again at 3 a.m. But I'm keeping the TV off and letting her sleep in. She deserves it.