The last days of January are the worst for us baseball fans. The “Hot Stove” has gone cold with a few exceptions (Manny and Tek to name a couple), but we are still a couple weeks away from pitchers and catchers reporting. We get an extra sliver of sunlight every day, but the snow continues to pile up. It is the no-man’s-land between the flurry of off-season activity and the start of a new spring season. So let’s spend a few minutes talking about something we love: Surviving Grady.

It’s hard to believe Red and I are about to start our sixth season of Red Sox blogging. If you’ve been stopping by for a while, you know how all this started. What’s happened over the past five years has been nothing short of amazing for Red and I. Getting a book published, appearing on NECN and WBZ…none of this was on our minds when a couple of beer-guzzling, under-educated Red Sox fans started typing out our frustrations back in 2004. And while interviewing Stewart O’Nan and Heidi Watney might not be on the level of an audience with the Pope or an invite to the White House, both were pretty big deals for us. But the greatest result of what we’ve done is the virtual community that has formed: folks stopping by to chat about the Sox, baseball, or any other subject they want. So for that, we thank you.

Here’s a few things we have in store for you in 2009…

Same as it Ever Was: Yeah, hopefully the best thing we’ve got coming is more of what brought you here in the first place. Red Sox fact, fiction and opinion, pop culture, puppet references, Jim Rice fashion, Kiss tributes…you know the drill. Red is sure to dazzle us with new episodes of the Cashman Headwarmer Dialogues and Adventures of Ellsbury N’ Elf, and I’m sure to bore everyone with my Jennifer Love-Hewitt and Rachel McAdams obsession and my dislike of Curt Schilling.

More Live Blogging: Nothing beats a Red Sox game being called by Remy, a 30-pack of PBR and a laptop. It’s what I like to call “the winning combination.” Seriously, we had more fun than is probably normal for a couple of “adults.” And the real-time interaction with the readers was hilarious. Thanks to Cover It Live, there will be much more of that in 2009. Buy your Pabst stock now.

Semi-live Game Broadcasts: The only thing worse than reading our vulgar, unsophisticated blather will be actually listening to us during a game. Thanks to YouCastr we’ll be bring our own audio broadcasts directly to your computers. This will probably happen once and you’ll immediately figure out just how F’ed up we really are. But we can guarantee a few laughs and that you’ll hear some things RemDawg and DO just aren’t allowed to say on NESN.

The 2009 SG Shirts: Oh, yes, new shirts are coming. Red’s been down in his underground bunker with a team of mildly retarded graphic artists and some crayons for the past couple of weeks. We expect to launch three new shirts for Opening Day. And that’s all I can say for now. They’re listening. And watching.

So there you have it, a frightening peak into the future, SG style. Stay tuned.