three words

Pitchers and catchers.

Those three words announce the beginning of the baseball season. Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training and the sounds of baseballs smacking leather fill the Arizona and Florida air. Spring is almost here.

Perhaps Spring Training holds such significance because baseball is so different from all other sports. The season is long, beautifully drawn out just as we hope each summer will be. There is a rhythm to the game, the season and its stories unfold daily. For six months, newspapers will print box scores – pages full of numbers incomprehensible to outsiders, but telling stories of drama and triumph to those who can read baseball’s written language.

Spring Training is a prelude to the coming spring and summer. Even as the temperature struggles and fails to climb above zero, news of men arriving to prepare for summer’s game portent a future of warmer air and longer days.

Until then, those three words bring me to a warmer place, of summers past and future, as the joy of another baseball season approaches.