Six Weeks of Contenders

I LOVE this time of year.  I love everything about it. 

Two days from now is the start of six weeks of contenders.  A time when every team has promise, every team is in first place and every team is a playoff contender.  Free Agent signings in the offseason, trades, players that are going to "rebound", players coming off injury are going to "return to form" and the blind ignorance of being a die hard fan that make us all believe that our team is going to the playoffs this year. 

It's when the Pitchers and Catchers report to Spring Training.  Arguably the best day of the year.  I remember in Vermont throwing a baseball on the frozen road in February with my brother because it was the only place that wasn't covered in snow and if the ball went off the road it would bounce down the road and we could still find it.  When Pitchers and Catchers reported, we went outside in the freezing cold to throw a baseball.  Why?  Because it was "Baseball Season", the greatest sport in America has awoken from it's wintery slumber and it was time to fall in love with the game all over again.

In Arizona it's a little different.  The weather is already great and possibly perfect every single day.  It's warming back up and the grass on the baseball diamonds are perfectly green.  Noah and I when we first moved here used to just walk onto the San Francisco Giants practice fields (which were 100x nicer than any baseball diamond either of us had EVER played on) and we would play homerun derby with our friends.  You don't realize how nice that grass is until you run down a long drive to left center, almost hoping it was a little out of your reach so you would be forced to lay out on that grass.  It's simply perfect.  Nowaday's the fields are a little more restricted and you can't just play on them but you can sit there in the park and just watch the guys practice on the four fields.  Running bases, throwing drills, hitting drills.  Their facilities are amazing but watching the process for all the guys is really entertaining for a true baseball fan.  Families sit out there with their kids watching the "pros" (who are really just invitees and minor league rookies at this point) and to them it's the greatest thing in the world.  Just as it should be.

Spring Training isn't just the promise of a winning season.  I'm a Diamondbacks fan, thru and thru at this point.  Grew up LOVING the Yankees when Don Mattingly was the MAN, Danny Tartabul was racking in dingers and they didn't make the playoffs ever.  But now after living in Arizona for ten years the Diamondbacks are my hometeam.  Horrible as they are they are promising and I'm really excited to see what each of their new players can do.  On paper they are better but are they really?  They are until April 2nd when the season starts but until that day I'm going to watch them day in and day out.  I'm going to read every single article in the paper, on the internet and on the back of a magazine.  Who's doing well, who's getting shelled, who's making the team, and who's getting the red tape in their locker.  It's the greatest thing about Spring Training.  It's not just a bunch of games to practice or to go get a beer under the sun.  These games all mean something to these guys that are not locked in.  Every pitch is potentially their last and every at bat could be their last shot at making it to "The Show."  When you think of it in those terms the stakes are a lot higher for the guys and a lot more exciting to watch it develop. 

I'm still looking forward to the 82 degree sunny days in March at the new Diamondbacks complex sitting on the perfect green grass drinking a $9 American beer watching an American game eating an American hot dog.  Few things in life to me are better than that but doing that while watching my team under an unbrella of promise playoffs? I'll take that all day long, even if it only lasts until April 2nd...