Spring such a beautiful thing

ShareThis

Spring arrives when baseball says it does. And according to my calendar it arrives within the week. It comes with the most treasured phrase in sports: pitchers and catchers report.There is no finer pairing of nouns in English than pitchers and catchers. Better than ladies and gentlemen, more promising than love and marriage, sweeter than milk and honey.The call for pitchers and catchers -- and how encouraging to realize that the Rockies have some of each -- alerts the heart to the end of winter. The words signal the dismissal of gloom and the announcement of hope.Pitchers and catchers. The dawn is always clear and golden and nothing can be grim when pitchers and catchers report. There ought to be some added bit of zest to those words this spring, like "National League champion pitchers and catchers arrive, with others you may have heard of to follow soon," just to remind the world that the Colorado Rockies are back.This has never been of much note in other springs, 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 Red Sox, who swept the Rockies out of the World Series.The Rockies will gather in Tucson, Ariz. with genuine pedigree, and a pennant in their pocket, something they have never had before, as authentic and worthy as those classic teams, the Dodgers, the Cardinals, the Braves.No longer will the chore be how to figure the Rockies to win, but to figure how they might lose, quite a different perspective.An odd phrase at that, spring training. Spring doesn't need training because spring is coming whether baseball does or not. But in places without baseball, spring is an annoyance, half promise, half punishment.Other sports have training, of course; football and basketball, as well as hockey, all have drills and rehearsals and calisthenics, but they do not stir any real emotion other than impatience.Preseason means exactly that, not the season, but something phony and make-believe, where two football teams are often not even playing the same game, each with its own agenda and more often without regular players. Spring training is a sketch of the possible, a warm preview of fond wishes, a simple sample of hope. And a guaranteed nine innings or more.There is no alarm on the clock, all the bananas are green and the smell of coffee anticipates its taste.Spring training is a first date, every year, a fresh, slow kiss. It 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 training is where the ages pass, the rookie and the once was. The view is clear in both directions. Every other season starts when it starts, and all that happens before is just so much sweat. The whole prologue could be scrapped and no one would miss any of it.Dare to take one day away from baseball's spring rituals and the heart groans.You can believe the myth that missing one turn in the batting cage in March and that's a base hit that's not going to fall in July. Miss a tackle in July and there are no consequences.In the spring you see with your heart rather than your eyes. You see the Rockies finding a second baseman in Tucson. You see it as surely as you know that all that's needed to renew Todd Helton's passion is a romp on the spongy green grass of Arizona.You know the prescription, and you know it will not work if anything is left out. Baseball players do not need spring training. Not really. They come to camp fit and flat, needing 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 blossoms than road tar.The hitters are ahead of the pitchers, except when it is the other way around.Or as they say, a night out in Tucson is highly unlikely.Pitchers and catchers report. And none too soon.(Contact Bernie Lincicome at lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com.)(Bernie Lincicome writes for the Rocky Mountain News at www.rockymountainnews.com.)