Posted By Jeff Fletcher on November 6, 2009 5:59 pm

It was actually over yesterday. Thanks to the Yankees finishing off the Phillies on Wednesday night, I got on a JetBlue flight on Thursday morning and flew nonstop back to Oakland. Today was the first real day of the offseason, which still figures to be busy because of all the player-movement news I’m going to try to chase, starting with the GM Meetings on Monday in Chicago. (Yes, back on the road, but only a three-day quick trip.)

Anyway, overall I’d say it was a pretty cool experience to go running around covering the playoffs for a month. It’s funny, because when it was over I looked back at some of the early parts, like that Dodgers-Cardinals series, and it seems like it was months ago.

I saw some great baseball games

• Dodgers-Cards, Game 2: Matt Holliday drops the ball
• Dodgers-Phillies, Game 2: Pedro is great, but leaves too soon
• Angels-Yankees, Game 3: Jeff Mathis? Really
• Angels-Yankees, Game 5: The Angels won, no they lost, no they won.
• Yankees-Phillies, Game 4: Hey, no one’s covering third!

Here are some of the grand totals:

• Days (includes any day I woke up or went to sleep away from home): 28 out of 32.
• Flight segments: 10. That’s not bad at all. Could have been a lot more.
• Airlines: 4 (Southwest, Continental, USAir, JetBlue).
• Train trips: 2. Thanks Amtrak, and that’s your last plug.
• Marriott nights: 24.
• Games covered: 14. Seems like it should have been more, huh? A lotta travel and workout days in there.
• Ballparks visited: 5. (LA, Anaheim, St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York).
• Estimated cost: $8,000. I don’t know the exact total because AOL pays for flights and cars and hotels directly, whenever possible, but this is a pretty close estimate. Really, we got off pretty cheap. Three of the flights I took were between NoCal and SoCal, so they were cheap, and all the nights I stayed in LA, I got a deal, at just $104 a night for my hotel. I also got a free train trip back and forth during the World Series. I also ate a lot of free meals, and often slept through breakfast, so I was only paying for one meal a day most days.
• Stories written: 35. Almost forgot the most important thing! You can read them all here.