I am waiting for Mark Teixeira.

Call this a baseball version of Waiting for Godot.

Or maybe it’s simply waiting for the dough.

It’s hard to know anymore.

You remember Godot, the guy they were all waiting for in the famous Samuel Beckett play, the guy who never showed up? The guy they all were waiting for, and he couldn’t even hit, never mind field.

Not like Teixeira, who is 28 and in the prime of his life, the ball all but dancing off his bat.

So who needs Godot, when Teixeira’s out there, right?

It’s yesterday afternoon and I am waiting for Mark Teixeira to make up his mind whether he’s going to take the world and all of its gold from the Red Sox, the Angels, the Yankees, the Nationals, or the Orioles.

I have been waiting for a long time.

We all have been.

Wasn’t it obvious at the end of the of the baseball season in October that one of the most prized plums in the baseball free agent garden was Teixeira?

Haven’t we all been waiting for the past two months to see what the Red Sox were going to do in his off-season, what are they going to do with Jason Varitek, were they going to get Teixeira?

Hasn’t this been on the sports page for two months now, endlessly talked about on the radio?

Where is Teixeira going to end up?

The baseball world waits.

And so do I.

No matter that out there in the real world somewhere there is an economic meltdown of historic proportions. No matter that every day brings reports of new layoffs, more bleak news, more stories of people trying to just make it through the week.

No matter that, on the surface anyway, it’s the worst of all possible times to be a major league ballplayer whose angst is to decide whether to take his $25 million a year or so from the Red Sox or from somewhere else. No matter that his reported contract — wherever it ends up being — could wipe out half of this state’s deficit for this fiscal year.

No matter that the Pats are fighting for the playoffs, and the Celtics are off to the best start in their history, and even the Bruins are big and bad again. No matter that this is deep in the baseball off-season, a time when the game is supposed to be in slumber.

No matter that Teixeira is a first baseman, and the Red Sox already have Kevin Youkilis at first, and if they get Teixeira, then they move Youkilis to third, and then what happens to Mike Lowell?

No matter that on this dark and gloomy day in December spring days in Fenway seem far away, with months of cold and slush to go before we see them.

No matter that I wouldn’t know Teixeira if he ran up to me.

I wait for Mark Teixeira to make up his mind.

Monday, the word was he was close to actually doing just that. It was all over ESPN, like some report from inside the baseball bunker, Teixeira close to making up his mind, the long nightmare finally over, all reported with a certain gravitas, as though the world was going to stop spinning when he finally made his decision.

Tuesday?

Tuesday, the word was it was down to five teams.

Or maybe that was Monday, and Tuesday he was close to making up his mind.

Who knows anymore?

Not me.

Yesterday morning the big news was that the hometown Orioles were out of the chase, the price tag apparently too high. Now it was down to four teams, or really just three, if you believed the theory that the Yankees were only waiting in the wings, their sights now turned on Manny.

And what was going on with Teixeira himself?

Who knew?

He had become like the man behind the screen, never seen, never heard from. Out of sight as everyone swirled around him. He wasn’t talking. His agent, master puppeteer Scott Boras, was silent, too. As were the teams involved. Suffice it to say there was more information coming out of the war in Iraq than there was about where a 28-year-old was going to go to make roughly $25 million a year to play a game little kids play for free.

Crazy?

Surreal?

One more sign the Apocalypse truly is upon us?

Use any phrase you want.

Me?

I am waiting for Mark Teixeira to make up his mind.

But pardon me if I no longer care where he ends up.

It’s all too much.

The money.

The process.

The waiting.

All of it.

All in the context of a national economic meltdown.

And I know that the Sox will be better with him than without him. I know that he is a big-time talent in his prime, someone who will perk up the Sox lineup, help to return it to the days when Manny and Big Papi were the best back-to-back punch in the game, those days when the middle of the Sox lineup wore pitchers out.

And I know that this is the economic reality of the game, and that if you don’t want to adhere to it your odds of winning become a ground ball to short.

But there’s something disgusting about all this, the fact it’s so public, the fact it’s all over the news, the fact that it’s covered with such importance, the fact it’s all but held baseball fans hostage, the fact it’s dragged out, the fact that he’s become the new poster child for excess in a time of national crisis.

For I am waiting for Mark Teixeira and I want to take a shower.

breynold@projo.com