The Promise of Spring

What is it for you? Is it the crocus (croci?) pushing up out of the ground and appearing out of snowy patches of your garden? Is it the swelling red buds of the maple trees that give the hills a early scarlet blanket? Perhaps it is some birds, maybe chickadees, doing their “Hey I need a mate for the spring” call.

Many New Englanders will tell you it is the sap buckets attached to majestic sugar maples. All of these visions are a promise, a promise that spring will be here soon, a promise that despite what the groundhog said (inferred?), soon there will be warm rain and flowers and leaves and breezes and life will start again. Sure, there still might be some snow or cold, or grey cloudy days that seem to never end. But there is a promise made and it is always kept.

For me, the promise comes in 4 little words – “Pitchers and Catchers report.” Nothing lets me know that the winter is finished as does these words – in a newspaper, on the TV news, or on the internet, and they have been heard this year. No one has to guess how I feel about winter. I have cursed it, bemoaned it, pleaded with it for months. I wrote about having enough of it. I cannot wait until its end is in sight. Worries of floods from melting snow or the mud season do not even make me flinch, I am ready to deal with these already.

When I was growing up, we depended on the newspaper for these words and usually got just a few lines a couple of times each week for the entirety of the spring. Maybe on the sports news on the radio, someone might report about an exhibition game. Sometimes there was an ad for opening day tickets. These things helped to keep the promise alive.

Today, we are flooded with the internet reports of spring training. I look at no fewer than 10 Yankee Baseball blogs and they are filled with the promise and thus they fill me. Daily reports, hundreds of words, tons of pictures, speculation, prediction, satisfaction. How can you go wrong. It’s like the menu at an all you can eat buffet, have some of this, a little of that, try these and those, go back for a second helping of promise and joy.

I love this stuff. I love the coverage. I love the speculation. I love the chatter. Who looks good, who is fat. Who is throwing the hell out of the ball, who is nursing an injury. Who will be starting, who will make the bench squad, who will try to catch on with another team? Who will go home? Will their head be held high or bowed in embarrassment? Who will win, who will lose?

This is the promise of the spring. I look forward to it each and every year and am never disappointed. It is here right now. Enjoy it!