Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. — Lao Tzu
It is a whisper in the ear, the soft voice of spring, a calendar note made after the last out of October. It is time, it says, it is time.
Yes, there it is, marked and remembered, pitchers and catchers report. The Tao of Spring.
What a happy coupling are pitchers and catchers, better suited than raisins and bran, as promising as diet and exercise, as welcome as hugs and kisses, as common as cops and coffee. You get the idea.
There ought to be some added bit of zest to those words this spring, like “National League favorite pitchers and catchers arrive, with others to follow,” just to remind the world that the Cubs are pregnant with honest expectation.
Usually it is not the case in other springs, where the rule is rather a reassembly of poor parts and wild dreams. What a difference a little bit of late magic makes, forgetting the very end against the Mets.
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The Cubs gather in Mesa, Ariz., with validity shared beyond the usual eager disciples, capable of fooling more believers than usual, the benefit, or the curse, of youth, ambition and semi-success.
The White Sox have the privacy they deserve in nearby Glendale, earned by standing defiantly in the middle of the road, avoiding traffic and major mishaps, their manager trying to keep from looking over his shoulder.
Spring training is an odd phrase. Spring doesn’t need training because spring arrives whether baseball comes or not. Yet, without baseball, spring is an annoyance, half promise, half punishment.
Other sports have training, too, basketball and football, as well as hockey. All have drills and rehearsals and calisthenics, but they do not stir any emotion other than impatience. Summer camp. Training camp. So prison sounding.
The NFL insists that it has a preseason, and so it does, not the real season, but something phony and devious, where two football teams are often not even playing the same game.
Spring is all about promises made. The season is about promises kept or promises broken. Spring training is about rebirth. The season is too often about regret.
Spring is where the ages pass, the rookie and the once was. The view is clear in both directions.
Baseball’s spring training is both ritual and sacrament, a sketch pad for the possible, a flyer for fond wishes, a simple sample of hope. And at least nine innings at reasonable prices.
Every other season starts when it starts, and all that happens before is just so much sweat. The whole prologue could be canceled and no one would miss any of it.
Dare to take a day away from baseball’s rites of spring and the heart groans.
It is more than myth that the missing of one turn in the batting cage in March is a base hit that is not going to fall in May. Miss a tackle in July and there are no consequences.
In the spring your heart sees rather than your eyes. You see the Cubs finding a closer. You see the Sox refreshed by a happy romp on the imported greenish grass of Arizona.
You know the prescription, and you know it will not work if anything is left out.
Baseball players do not really need spring training. They come to camp fit and flat, requiring only a little repetition to restore their skills.
Here’s the truth. Spring training is not for them, after all, but for the rest of us.
Spring training begins in orange groves and among gravel lawns, a last bit of respect for nature as we wish it to be. Nature is losing to paved and numbered parking lots, to pieces of paradise with air conditioning.
Tomorrow climbs over itself balcony by balcony to block its own view. The air reeks less of fragrant blossoms than of paving tar.
The hitters are ahead of the pitchers, except when it is the other way around. For now reality is on hold. It will arrive soon enough.
For now there is no alarm on the clock, all the bananas are green and the aroma of the coffee anticipates its taste.
Bernie Lincicome is a special contributor to the baiduhai.