Tomorrow marks the spiritual beginning of spring, as pitchers and catchers report to training camp or at least, the Orioles' pitchers and catchers report. This is the season that we've all been waiting for and in spite of the eye-high snow piled in dirty heaps along the roadsides and in the parking lots, we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. That light is really the first ray of summer sunshine.
The beauty of spring training, of course, is that it allows us to practice unrestricted believing in the most active of ways. Sure, intellectually we understand that there are too many rookies in the starting rotation; that we don't have a legitimate cleanup hitter; that the guy were expecting to anchor third has never played the position before. Yet, somehow, our hearts heed not our heads, but our imaginations, and we come to believe--I mean believe!--that the rookies will pitch like veterans, that the left fielder will jump from 18 to 40 home runs, and that the converted third baseman will resemble Brooks Robinson at the old hot corner.
The beauty of baseball, of course, is that our belieiving becomes reality just often enough to keep us coming back year after year and losing season after losing season.
Here's to spring training. Were she a woman, her name would be Hope.
AMEM to that. It's currently sunny and 80 degrees here in Yuma and all of Arizona is buzzing with the arrival of spring training. Back to reality Friday when I return to Baltimore to finish out the remainder of my "winter sentence". See you this weekend - let's do something warm.
Posted by: Al | February 17, 2010 at 01:02 PM