For all sane people, there’s only one proper reaction to the passing into history of another Super Bowl: Just a few more weeks until spring training! Yes, baseball fans, the long wait till next year is almost over. Except in Richmond. Virginia’s capital city will be without professional baseball for the first time in 44 years. We’ve parsed endlessly the reasons why. So let’s look to the future.

Virginians absorbed more national political limelight in 2008 than in most of the previous half century combined. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton battled for the state’s Democratic Convention dele gates in February. In the fall, Obama and sidekick Joe Biden faced off against John McCain and Sarah Palin for the commonwealth’s 13 electoral votes.

The winter of our discontent arrived with great expectations. In Richmond and across the nation, Americans are filled with fear and hope. Great mounds of money have evaporated for reasons many of us only vaguely understand.