At some point in my life, long ago, I entertained the notion of how fabulous it would be to work as a traveling baseball writer.

One hundred and sixty-two Dodgers games a year, baby! And that’s on top of spring training!

Uh, no. You really don’t want that. Unless you’re a freak about ball … and don’t mind the real possibility of being shuffled off into the “baseball guy” corner of any sports department … forever.

Actually, I can’t think of more than one or two sports beats I would rather cover less than wall-to-wall baseball. And I like baseball. I played baseball. I know baseball. But cover it full-time?

No. Thank you.

Sports departments, newspapers anyway, once upon a time were larded with guys (and, then, gals) who aspired to cover ball. And the more of it, the merrier. Full-time, if possible.

Then most of us get a taste of it … and realize “162” may be the loneliest number in sports journalism.

You know all those timeless and pastoral pleasures of a ballgame? No clock, the measured pace, it’s done-when-it’s-done on the manicured greensward before us?

That can get old. For about 99 percent of us. Including sports journalists.

I realized this a long time ago. Like, 1977. I fell into the Angels baseball beat at my old newspaper because three veteran reporters on a small staff left.

“Oh, joy,” I thought. It’s not 162, but it’s halfway there!

Then I did a week of home games. And then another week, a couple of weeks later. Then maybe 10 straight.

And long before we all got to the All-Star break … I knew with a cold certainty I would never, ever want to be a traveling baseball writer. Not even if it were regarded, at the time, as the primo beat in the office. Maybe 25 games a year, sure. One a week. Good number. But no more.

Baseball full-time is just too slow.

There. I said it.

And it’s not just the three-hour games. It’s the half-hour waiting for the clubhouse to open, after the game, and the 30 minutes listening to cliches, and the extra hour doing your final story.  It’s the two-three hours on the field and in the clubhouse before the game. Hanging around, mostly. In Case Something Happens and the competition is there to see/hear it.

But Something Happens almost never.

And then to do it 162 times?!?

Know how many plane trips that makes? With crying babies and tubby people wedged in the seat next to you, and a zillion passes through security? How many hotels you’re in and out of?

And for seven months a year. A six-month season and a month of spring training. And of that seven months, something like four of it will be spent away from home. Living out of a bag. To think that sounds like fun, you have to have a marriage so bad that you ought to be divorced, anyway.

I was thinking about all this at the Dodgers game last night. And it was an important game. But it lasted 3 hours and 21 minutes. With a 7:10 p.m. start … a full three hours after Joe Torre did his “are we done yet” dugout press conference. Zzzz.

You sit there and wonder, “how many pitches can Andre Ethier foul off?” And “how many relievers does Bud Black plan to use (seven), and will he bring in each and every one of them in the middle of an inning (not quite; only five)?”

Watching baseball day after day, night after night, especially if it’s a bad or boring team … well, if definitely falls under the heading of “things you feel yourself getting old while doing.”

Some guys love it. A handful of them. And God bless ’em. I have no idea how they stand it.

It’s even tougher, these days. Because so few papers travel. Several major-league cities are down to one print guy traveling with the ballclub. And maybe one mlb.com person. So you show up in the out-of-town press box and you have that one person to talk to … well, maybe the team flack … and other than that, you barely know anyone in there. Not like the old days, when 4-5 people traveled on a beat and you got along well with one or two of them so you always had a bar/cab buddy.

And the days are longer than ever, as noted above, because the access has broadened, which is bad because you have to loiter. Just in case.

No. You do not want to do this. Well, I certainly don’t want to. Not that it’s anything I have to worry about.

Just be careful what you wish for. Twenty years later, you will have spent a career in the baseball ghetto, never knowing anyone in the office, seeing nothing but ball — and feeling like you’ve been covering it for 50 years.

(Oh, and the beats I’d rather cover even less than baseball? I was going to say “NASCAR” … but now I’m thinking you get half of every week away from the track, so maybe not even motors.)