The tree branches resist betraying their plans. The air maintains a stubborn, residual chill. The roll call of our living legends has been mournfully diminished. The immediate future for that which we treasure is at best blank, more realistically bleak.
But who cares today? Today there are pitchers and today there are catchers and soon there will be second basemen and left fielders and coaches running drills and platitudes mouthed in full force and a starting lineup jammed primarily with young, high-numbered strangers, one or two of whom may someday grow into memorable figures. The prospects in our minds aren’t likely to match the prospects in our heads, but that’s hardly the point.
The point is spring. Better yet, Spring.
If it’s not quite the source material for Baseball Like It Oughta Be, it is baseball, and that is as it ought to be for people like us. To borrow a phrase imagined decades ago but I heard this weekend [1] for the first time, someday just started. And even if it hasn’t, Pitchers & Catchers have.
C’mon Pelf. C’mon Niese. C’mon Thole. C’mon the whole bunch of you. It’s February 20. We’ve been waiting not quite five months for this…or in baseball terms, forever.
The Happy Recap podcast’s tribute to Gary Carter, featuring interviews with several bloggers (myself included) is here [2]. A New Yorker piece on the humor inherent in the Mets of late, with some thoughts from yours truly, is here [3].