Posted By Jeff Fletcher on October 1, 2009 6:36 pm

Hey folks, I’m about to embark on new experience, and I’m going to be blogging about it here. I’ll be covering the whole month of MLB playoffs for FanHouse, which means a lot of traveling around the country, flying by the seat of my pants, so to speak. I figured it might be interesting to bring you people along with me (if there are any of you people still reading my blog). And if it’s not interesting, well, that probably means that I had no travel nightmares whatsoever, which would also be good.

I’ve covered a whole playoff season once before, in 2002, when the Giants went to the World Series. The difference that time was I was covering a local team, so I got to come home every few days. This time I’m going to be gone for an entire month, unless the Baseball Gods give me some quick series that allow a little break between rounds.

I’m leaving on Monday afternoon, although at this point I’m still not 100 percent sure where I’m going. It seemed pretty clear-cut a few days ago, that the Dodgers were going to win the NL West and start the playoffs at home on Wednesday and Thursday, and I’d be in LA. I still like their chances, but they need to win at least one game against the Rockies this weekend to ensure that. If they don’t, well, I guess I’ll be getting some new flights.

While we’re on the subject, I’ve got to tell you about what I did on the final day of the 2006 season. The A’s had won the division, but their opponent for the first round was going to be the Twins or Tigers, and they didn’t know who going into the last day of the season. They did know, however, that they’d start on the road. So on the final Sunday of the season, I got on a plane from Oakland to Chicago, and I then I parked myself for the day at O’Hare, watching baseball on my MLB.TV. I figured I could jump on a later flight either to Detroit or Minneapolis. Of course, the Tigers went extra innings, and by the time they finally lost, sending me to Minnesota, it was too late for me to get a reasonably priced flight to Minneapolis. I ended up spending the night at the O’Hare Marriott and jumping the first flight on Monday morning to the Twin Cities.

It’s sort of exciting to be traveling spur-of-the moment like that, but also kind of a pain. So on Friday I’ll be rooting for the Dodgers and Phillies to win, and the Cardinals to lose, because that would set the NL matchups in stone. (I don’t care about the Twins and Tigers. That series doesn’t affect me at all.)