Take a rest--it's for your own good.(Closer)

As you know, a season consists of 162 games played in roughly 180 days. That leaves us basically 18 off-days, and they are like gold.

For West Coast teams, however, many off-days are travel days. You might be off the field on travel days, but it's not like you have the whole day off. Still, every team is in this together. Typically, when an East Coast team travels to the West Coast, it gets an off-day on the return. Think about it: If you playa night game in Seattle, you wouldn't get to New York until at least 10 a.m. the next day. Playing that day would be brutal. One weird fact about this year's schedule is the Brewers have a stretch of eight Mondays off in nine weeks. So go figure.

There are fewer off-days once Memorial Day passes and the weather warms up. That's when a manager really faces the challenge of getting all the guys some rest without hurting the team. If you're a superstar, your team relies on you so much that trying to figure out when to give you a day off is tricky business. When, for example, would you have sat Mark McGwire in 1998 when the fans were coming out to see him go for the home run record? How about Barry Bonds the past few years? Dusty Baker felt like he should give Barry an off-day on the road so his hometown fans could see him play every game. But is that fair to the fans in the road cities?

Every team has a guy vital to its success, such as Jeff Bagwell in Houston, Albert Pujols in St. Louis, Todd Helton in Colorado, Mike Sweeney in Kansas City, Jose Vidro in Montreal, Mike ...