Spring Training

Well, Spring Training in the Tampa Bay area is here again. So far my son Dave and I have been to four games. Saw the Yankees at the Phillies' new park in Clearwater, saw two Devil Ray games in St. Pete, and a Blue Jays game in Dunedin. Three of them were home openers. For anyone who's not a real fan, this past week would probably seem to be pure insanity. My knees and head are pretty sunburned. The ticket prices are a little higher this year. Beers and hot dogs are pretty steep too. But all that really doesn't seem to matter that much. The parks are still pretty full of fans, the grass is still the greenest imaginable, and you can still hear the sound of a horsehide ball pop into a cowhide glove. That sound is as sweet as ever. This dawned on me as we waited for the Yankees vs. Phillies game to start. Dave and I were walking around the new park (Brighthouse Park) and ended up at the bullpen area, where the pitchers from both teams are side by side in adjacent bullpens. This was when I heard, for the first time this year, the pop. The starters were warming up and sometimes delivering some of the serious heat that can really make a glove pop. Something hypnotic about that.

Of course that's not all there is to spring training. There's the warming up. The long toss where you see two players effortlessly toss a ball back and forth two hundred feet or more. There's the batting practice, hitting long balls out of the cage. There's the ultra green grass and the meticulous attention applied to getting the chalk for the batter's box just right, and home plate painted brilliant white. How much can you fill, tamp and rake a pitcher's mound? Just the right amount until it's perfect. Then the players take the field and dig up the well groomed Tennessee clay infield with their spikes until it suits them.

Oh yeah, the game. Well the games are just games. Once in a while a spectacular play, but not that often this early in the year. Sometimes a fantastic hit. Every now and then a great throw. It's still early for great baseball. The pitchers are only seeing two innings, the batters maybe four or five. Plenty of players are playing that will be back to Triple-A or lower when the season starts. But this is baseball's continuity. It's another year. And all through those games, there's that constant pop of horsehide into cowhide.

Spring Training - 2004