It's Almost time

Well the Super Bowl is over, and it's that time of year when we expect to hear those immortal words "Play Ball" uttered , down in Florida and Arizona.

Well in a week and a half for most teams, spring training will officially begin.

So, I guess it's time to load up the trucks with equipment, gatorade, and orange juice and get them down south.

The weather has been co operating a little better, Arizona is a sweaty 78 degrees and much of Florida is hovering around 72 degrees, but it will get warmer.

The Toronto Blue Jays new spring complex will be split into two parts, the main camp and the minor league camp, so all coaches will be super active as their resources will be stretched thin.
Pitchers and Catchers will arrive first, then the rest of the team will show u a few days later.

The grounds look good, a slight rain has fallen on the practise field, so the morning sun will have to dry it out before the players are allowed to take the field. Do not want any turned ankles early in camp. The trucks that come down from the north are rumbling throught the parking lot, the attendants getting ready to unlatch the doors and remove and store their baseball gear, uniforms, gloves, bats and balls.

Palm trees swaying with the breeze greet eager young men and old ones too.

Players from all over the world are now deep into the daily work that defines major league spring training camps in Arizona and Florida.

Most, undoubtedly, are still filled with that unexplainable feeling that captures baseball’s spring fever. It is in the air, in the humidity and, over time, in your bones. 

Your own internal barometer is telling you it’s time to play ball.

But the knowledge that baseball season will start again is not free of trepidation. Pros, especially veterans, are aware that no matter how they may push science, they will inevitably be defeated by the battle of attrition that erodes skill sets and, ultimately, their value to a team.

Ballplayers know the phone call asking for their services will stop ringing one day, but the birds of spring will never stop calling. The ghosts of our career in this love affair will stay with us as glimpses.

Right now, the players are focused on the work at hand, and until that first cut, they all know they have the same opportunity as every player in camp: to make the team, make history, and for those at the end of their careers, buy time.

Yet at best, it is a mortgage, divinely owned and borrowed. It is a spring contract where the fine print is our friend, reminding us that the only way to extend time in this game is to deed it to the next generation.