Pitchers and Catchers and Other Reasons To Go On Living

As the oil burner pushes steam through the radiators in my home and serenades me with a song of shelter from the brisk cold of a February morning in New York, I read about pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training this week and all is good with the world.

As usual there are a ton of questions yet to be answered in both the Mets and Yankees camps, but whether A-Rod can find true happiness (while counting his ever-growing pile of cash) is not nearly as interesting to me as what is transpiring on Long Island. Hundreds if not thousands of players who play for the love of the game are already limbering up their arms and legs - if they indeed ever stopped playing over the winter - in anticipation of spring baseball. Bring it on! Not that I am looking forward to standing on the sidelines under several layers of jackets while my sons endeavor to hit the ball out of the infield without feeling as if their hands are going to fall off, but even that is better than feeling confined to my home without nothing on the tube but those indoor sports that insist on letting a timepiece tell them when the game is over.

Baseball is upon us, my friends. "Pitchers & catchers" is more than just a phrase employed by talk-show hosts to keep us interested until something interesting happens. It is a phrase that tells us we survived another winter. It tells us that it is just a matter of time before we hear the sound of baseballs being slapped by wood bats into leather gloves. It tells us that before we know it, we will feel the warm sun on the backs of our necks as we anticipate the outcome of the next pitch, and the pitch after that and the pitch after that.

I can't wait.