For the Love of Spring Training

By: Mike Carter

Baseball. I don’t recall a time in my life without it. The beauty, the majesty, all of it. Pitchers and catchers report in less than a week. I barely noticed that today is a gray Monday; I’m too busy thinking about what outfielder the White Sox can get to lend some hope to my winter dreams of late October baseball.

I remember as a kid reading Tom Boswell’s “Why Time Begins on Opening Day.”  I bought a copy for a quarter, I think, at my local library. Most years, I read it again as we get close to Opening Day.

One of the most memorable passages was this one:  “The crowd and its team had finally understood that in games, as in many things, the ending, the final score, is only part of what matters. The process, the pleasure, the grain of the game count too.”

The process. Boswell is correct. The game is a process and most casual fans do not understand that. Many fans start packing up before the game is over. I sit there, alone with my thoughts much of the time, trying to be a student and soak it all in, hoping that the dalliance in front of me will not end. A game consists of so many moving parts, and contains not only the physical process of the game, which is very important, but also the cerebral parts as well. To be a baseball fan is to be a thinker, a philosopher, a lover of innermost thoughts.  Many people think baseball fans are loudmouths; the good ones are not. They are usually introverts who enjoy their own company and run through Boswell’s process hundreds of times a summer.

It begins every year anew. March approaches us, and the air and winds grow lighter, the sun shines a little brighter, the sky is a healthier shade of blue. The start of Spring Training brings renewable hope. We ask ourselves questions, muttering over our coffee and reading our preview magazines. Just this morning, to no one in particular, I said out loud, “maybe this will be the year Brett Lawrie really gets it?  The talent is there.”  And I realize no one in this small house understands a word I am saying from mid-February until late October. You probably have a similar type of question about a player on your team, no matter who you follow, from Seattle to Miami.

I live on the outskirts of Chicago and today, the birds are winging around and the sky is pale, the sun heatless. But you can feel spring in the air. And with that, my senses start to come alive again after another dreary Midwestern winter.  I picture myself at Spring Training. The sun climbs high in the sky and a light breeze blows your shirt sleeves. I can hear the repeated cracks of the bat in the cage as players start to work on their fundamentals again. I hear the chatter and laughter of the guys talking as they play catch and loosen up. I smell the freshly cut grass. I hear kids yelling for autographs. I hear a dad explaining what the shortstop and second baseman are practicing as they work their pivot. The pop of the new catcher’s mitt as guys ratchet up and begin their throwing off the extra mounds. The abilities that I dreamed of having as a kid, but never possessed, are all in front of me. I don’t know if there is a heaven, but for me, this may be as close as I will get to it. You could make the case that Arizona or Florida in mid-March is heaven.

I play scenes in front of my eyes that I know we will all see again, soon enough. I see Mike Trout scaling the wall to rob another home run. I see Yadier Molina pick another guy off first base. I see Clayton Kershaw freeze and fool another hitter. I see Dee Gordon going from first to third on a rope to right field, sliding head first (watch those thumbs, Dee). I see Giancarlo Stanton swatting a mammoth homerun. I see Ichiro Suzuki tipping his cap to the crowd as he gets his 3,000^th hit this year (we hope). Part of the process is that the storylines never end, nor does the game within the game.

And all that I write here is only a dream that fades back into Monday morning. But soon, the dream will become reality, once again. And baseball will be back in full swing, and the process will begin anew, once again, as it always does, and must. We’re inching closer and closer to throwing off the winter coats and getting the gloves oiled up and ready. I am now in my early forties and have gone through this ritual longer than I can remember. I never tire of it, ever. Nothing in my life has ever surpassed my love for this great game; I would argue that it is the best game. As the old writer Pope once said, hope springs eternal. Let it be for all of us as we get ready for another season of the process, the pleasure, and the grain of the game.

Thank you for taking a couple of minutes to read this prattling of a winter-exhausted baseball fan. I look forward to writing more this year!