I really don’t have a problem with winter, myself.
It might have something to do with my French-Canadian ancestry. But winter doesn’t bother me. Not even an unusually gray winter, like the one we’ve had here in Spokane this year. I once spent the winter in Moscow (Russia, not Idaho) and was as happy as a wet dog behind the kitchen stove from the first snowflake to the last slush-ball. Of course I was hopelessly in love with a beautiful Russian girl at the time, and you know the old song about “June in January.” Love will color your perception of anything, even the supposedly brutal Russian winter.
I know that not many people share my fondness for white snowscapes and gray skies. The late pianist Glenn Gould did, but with him there was that “Canadian connection”—Gould was a native of Canada. My wife, for instance, would much rather be in the Bahamas right now. (She’s welcome to them. I’ll take the inland northwest over the tropics any day.)
My best friend, Jim Provenza, turns 52 next Sunday (Feb. 18). He and his older brother Rick were both February babies. A lot of people get the blues in February, when winter hits the two-months-and-still-going mark. Unfortunately Rick was one of them, despite being a February child. He tended to get depressed in February and in February, 1998, took his own life.
To a lot of people February is like 28 Mondays. This is the time of year when those susceptible to Seasonal Affective Disorder, the blues that result from lack of sunshine, are most likely to be seeing counselors, busting out the SAD lights, booking flights to Aruba or hammering themselves with booze.
It’s a pity that so many February-blues sufferers simply do that, suffer, and wait. I could offer them a quick and easy fix for February Funk.
If only they knew what we baseball fans know, and have known all along.
Spring begins in February!
It does for us, anyway. At this moment, on Valentine’s Day, planeloads of baseball players are disembarking in places like Lakeland, Vero Beach and Fort Myers, Florida and Tucson, Scottsdale and Peoria, Arizona. Spring training starts today, for pitchers and catchers anyway. The rest of the players will show up in a week or so. But by the end of February, every player in Major League Baseball will be out there stretching, throwing, running and taking batting practice, either in the Grapefruit League (Florida) or the Cactus League (Arizona.) Talking baseball among themselves when they aren’t catching up on what they did all winter. On the official website of Major League Baseball, a clock is ticking: Countdown To Spring Training Games. 13 days to go. It might seem incredible to someone in Syracuse, NY, digging out from under 100 inches of snow, but then again, if that snow-digger is a baseball fan, it’s not strange at all. Hickory and horsehide are in the air, February or no.
And if spring training comes, can Opening Day be far behind? First will come the exhibition games of course, which start in early March. Everyone’s rusty of course, so the exhibition games sometimes have absurdly lopsided scores: 20-3. 19-6. So what? The faithful are signing up even now (yours truly among them) for Internet and cable packages which will permit us to tune in the pre-season action.
We already smell April: the freshly-mown outfield grass, hot dogs, glove leather, foaming beer. Crazy? Obsessive? Maybe. But no worse than the football fan I remember from long ago, when ABC Monday Night Football made its debut, who celebrated that one additional day of gridiron action because “You can see the weekend from Tuesday.”
Well, you can see April from mid-February, if you’re a baseball fan, that is. It doesn’t bother me if the skies are still gray and there’s snow and sleet in the forecast. Not when I can log on and read about the Red Sox’ new pitching sensation Daisuke Matsusaka. Or about the St. Louis Cardinals’ chances to repeat in the World Series this year. Or about the fact that the San Diego Padres now have both Giles brothers, Marcus and Brian, playing for them. Or about Barry Zito’s having crossed the bay: he’s now working for the San Francisco Giants, no longer for the Oakland A’s.
The work begins soon. As does spring. It starts right now, on V-day, at least in places like Peoria, AZ and Vero Beach.
I love this quotation about baseball, from Joel Zweskin, a Chicago White Sox fan who lives in North Carolina:
“It’s unique unto itself. Football, basketball and hockey are variations of the same concept—back and forth in a linear progression to score a goal. Baseball, however, is mapped out on the field unlike any other sport. A running back or return specialist can run 100 yards, tops; a baserunner legging out an inside-the-park homer runs 20 yards farther. Baseball is the most democratic of sports—any size can play, and because the ball is not controlled by the offense but rather the defense, every player at any given time is involved in a play. Along with the anecdotally accepted premise that hitting a pitched baseball is the single most difficult thing to do in sports, so might fielding a 175 mph line drive or grounder down the line. I love baseball because it is the greatest game ever invented.”
Amen, brother. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. And play ball!
It might have something to do with my French-Canadian ancestry. But winter doesn’t bother me. Not even an unusually gray winter, like the one we’ve had here in Spokane this year. I once spent the winter in Moscow (Russia, not Idaho) and was as happy as a wet dog behind the kitchen stove from the first snowflake to the last slush-ball. Of course I was hopelessly in love with a beautiful Russian girl at the time, and you know the old song about “June in January.” Love will color your perception of anything, even the supposedly brutal Russian winter.
I know that not many people share my fondness for white snowscapes and gray skies. The late pianist Glenn Gould did, but with him there was that “Canadian connection”—Gould was a native of Canada. My wife, for instance, would much rather be in the Bahamas right now. (She’s welcome to them. I’ll take the inland northwest over the tropics any day.)
My best friend, Jim Provenza, turns 52 next Sunday (Feb. 18). He and his older brother Rick were both February babies. A lot of people get the blues in February, when winter hits the two-months-and-still-going mark. Unfortunately Rick was one of them, despite being a February child. He tended to get depressed in February and in February, 1998, took his own life.
To a lot of people February is like 28 Mondays. This is the time of year when those susceptible to Seasonal Affective Disorder, the blues that result from lack of sunshine, are most likely to be seeing counselors, busting out the SAD lights, booking flights to Aruba or hammering themselves with booze.
It’s a pity that so many February-blues sufferers simply do that, suffer, and wait. I could offer them a quick and easy fix for February Funk.
If only they knew what we baseball fans know, and have known all along.
Spring begins in February!
It does for us, anyway. At this moment, on Valentine’s Day, planeloads of baseball players are disembarking in places like Lakeland, Vero Beach and Fort Myers, Florida and Tucson, Scottsdale and Peoria, Arizona. Spring training starts today, for pitchers and catchers anyway. The rest of the players will show up in a week or so. But by the end of February, every player in Major League Baseball will be out there stretching, throwing, running and taking batting practice, either in the Grapefruit League (Florida) or the Cactus League (Arizona.) Talking baseball among themselves when they aren’t catching up on what they did all winter. On the official website of Major League Baseball, a clock is ticking: Countdown To Spring Training Games. 13 days to go. It might seem incredible to someone in Syracuse, NY, digging out from under 100 inches of snow, but then again, if that snow-digger is a baseball fan, it’s not strange at all. Hickory and horsehide are in the air, February or no.
And if spring training comes, can Opening Day be far behind? First will come the exhibition games of course, which start in early March. Everyone’s rusty of course, so the exhibition games sometimes have absurdly lopsided scores: 20-3. 19-6. So what? The faithful are signing up even now (yours truly among them) for Internet and cable packages which will permit us to tune in the pre-season action.
We already smell April: the freshly-mown outfield grass, hot dogs, glove leather, foaming beer. Crazy? Obsessive? Maybe. But no worse than the football fan I remember from long ago, when ABC Monday Night Football made its debut, who celebrated that one additional day of gridiron action because “You can see the weekend from Tuesday.”
Well, you can see April from mid-February, if you’re a baseball fan, that is. It doesn’t bother me if the skies are still gray and there’s snow and sleet in the forecast. Not when I can log on and read about the Red Sox’ new pitching sensation Daisuke Matsusaka. Or about the St. Louis Cardinals’ chances to repeat in the World Series this year. Or about the fact that the San Diego Padres now have both Giles brothers, Marcus and Brian, playing for them. Or about Barry Zito’s having crossed the bay: he’s now working for the San Francisco Giants, no longer for the Oakland A’s.
The work begins soon. As does spring. It starts right now, on V-day, at least in places like Peoria, AZ and Vero Beach.
I love this quotation about baseball, from Joel Zweskin, a Chicago White Sox fan who lives in North Carolina:
“It’s unique unto itself. Football, basketball and hockey are variations of the same concept—back and forth in a linear progression to score a goal. Baseball, however, is mapped out on the field unlike any other sport. A running back or return specialist can run 100 yards, tops; a baserunner legging out an inside-the-park homer runs 20 yards farther. Baseball is the most democratic of sports—any size can play, and because the ball is not controlled by the offense but rather the defense, every player at any given time is involved in a play. Along with the anecdotally accepted premise that hitting a pitched baseball is the single most difficult thing to do in sports, so might fielding a 175 mph line drive or grounder down the line. I love baseball because it is the greatest game ever invented.”
Amen, brother. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. And play ball!
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