The first day of major league baseball!

Any true baseball fan knows this day as surely as his birthday: PITCHERS AND CATCHERS REPORT!  

Sometime over the last four months, winter set in.  Could have been after the last pitch of the World Series, maybe earlier when your team fell out of contention; no more box-scores in the morning newspaper or steady hum of play-by-play on the radio or exciting replays of great moments seen on ESPN... it all disappeared.  But the real fan knew, all the time, deep down, this day would come and, even in the midst of a major northwest snowstorm, down there in the Arizona sun, the pitchers and catchers of the Seattle Mariners would step out on the field and start to throw the ball around.

I haven't added anything to this blog since 2015, but as the baseball season wound down last year I decided to start posting my musings about the game everyday from the pitchers' arrival through the end of the Series.  So here we go, post #1.

Spring training can take on all kinds of narratives, but there is one common denominator from camps in Florida and Arizona: optimism.  From now until the first pitch of the regular season in late March, every one has a chance of winning the pennant.  Any one.  It could happen.  It is going to happen to some team... it might just be yours.

Reality will set in soon enough, but these weeks, leading up to the start of games that count, are full of possibility.  Every pitcher could win 25 games or save 50.  Any hitter could blast 35 home runs or steal 70 bases.  It could happen.  The possibilities are endless.  This is before a single hanging curve-ball is blasted out of the park or a backdoor slider strikes out the side with the bases loaded.  The dark side of baseball will reveal itself soon enough; for now, anything and everything is possible, however unlikely.

So welcome home everyone, fans and players alike.  Time to set aside the things of winter and get ready for a spring and summer full of 3-2 pitches, long lead-offs, warning track catches, passed balls, line drives that scatter the dugout and 5-4-3 double-plays.