ESPN’s lovable baseball analyst Tim Kurkjian is bidding a sad farewell to newspaper box scores. Now before you understandably ask, who cares, let T-Kurk provide the explanation in an awesomely self-depreciating manner:

We interrupt the stretch run of this fascinating baseball season with something completely irrelevant, epically ridiculous and wildly unimportant. A most absurd streak quietly ended in 2010: For the first time since 1989, I no longer clip every box score of every baseball game from the nearest newspaper and tape each one into a spiral notebook, a daily task that I’ve estimated, at roughly 15 minutes per day, has cost me 40 days of my truly pathetic life.

Last year Kurkjian knew the end was near for his wildly unimportant and absurd streak when the Washington Post no longer ran all the box scores due to deadline issues. That’s when he decided it would be his last year of cutting up his sports section and gluing it to another piece of paper.

Nonetheless, Kurkjian should go down as the Michael Jordan of box score collecting, even he is the only person who does such a thing.

On one memorable night in 2002, I went to bed at 11 o’clock, realized in horror I had forgotten to do my box score book, got dressed, clipped and taped my box scores, then lay down for a restful six hours of sleep as my wife looked at me and wondered how she could have married such an unfathomable geek.

That’s maniacal devotion, not to mention an incredibly wild night. As you can see from the photo, collecting box scores is a tiring, thankless process. He’s still checking them every day though, it’s just no longer accompanied by any bizarre rituals.

Thanks to Tim Kurkjian, I’m now aware that Angel Pagan has never been hit by a pitch in his major league career. And now, just like T-Kurk, I’ll be checking the Mets box score every day to find out if the streak has been broken.

Sad end to a man’s quest for knowledge [ESPN]

[Epic Kurkjian photo via ESPN]