Pause, if you will, from the stressful, burdensome (yet entertaining) daily grind and the sturm und drang that is politics. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will still be there tomorrow (if she is not in prison by then); Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Ben Carson ... they will be there, too. And we will not have to look hard to find them.
Today, though, my heart is gladdened by competition of a completely different nature.
As I ride my exercise bicycle each morning, the TV is typically tuned to a saved program from the DVR, most frequently during the winter months the Fox News program that would have started an hour earlier. Zip, zip past the commercials and the animal segments. These days, though, a different program is often on the menu.
I refer, of course, to the news of my favorite baseball team as they commence working out in sunny Florida, preparing for the beginning of a new season. Yes, friends, Spring Training has begun.
I am not there in South Florida, nor do I want to be (OK, if I weren't working for a living and could go, I suppose ...). It doesn't appeal to me that much to watch grotesquely overpaid athletes and, in some cases, grotesquely overpaid and overweight men trying to pass themselves off as athletes, throwing, hitting and catching baseballs outside of a game environment.
It is, you see, all in the symbolism. Football is a sport where the players suffer pains while the fans in the stadiums suffer the cold. It is a distinctly winter, indoor pursuit (for the saner fans, certainly). I have been to many NFL games and enjoyed almost none -- too far away to distinguish the action, too cold to distinguish my toes or appreciate the beer. Hockey is only a winter sport, although its arenas offer a much more tolerable and temperate environment for the fan. And the NBA ... is there still an NBA?
Baseball, though, arises with the early spring, as the non-tropical USA is only starting to stir from its winter doldrums. To watch the players on TV on your favorite sports network is to celebrate the fact that soon, very soon, they will begin exhibition games that mean nothing except to those fighting for a job. As the teams arise, we emerge from hibernation flush with the knowledge that the sun, so ineffective for several months, will soon win its annual battle with the Earth's axis tilt, and warm us instead of the Australians.
It is all in the symbolism. My team and yours, and even Donald Trump's, are all tied for the division lead at 0-0. The can't-miss prospect has not yet shown that he cannot hit the slider low and away -- or throw one effectively. Those needing tendon-transplant elbow surgery have either already had it or are recovering from it. Surely no one on my team will be sidelined so dramatically.
All of the miraculous things that can happen to a last-place team -- like mine -- remain totally in the realm of the possible, much as tomorrow, or soon, I may wake up and walk outside to a sunny day with the temperature in the 70s. And anything can happen, because we are at Square One, the first step, the Beginning. Spring Training has kicked off (and my metaphors have now officially gotten mixed).
From here until late October, I will be on that bike in the morning seeking out the details of the previous day's activities of my team. I will cheer its victories, enjoy the maturation of its new stars, slowly mourn those in the twilight of their careers. I will watch something else, likely, on the mornings after heartbreaking losses.
But for now, it is Spring. The unlikely 162-0 season is at least a mathematical possibility. While I know every day will not be sunny and in the 70s, the overwhelming possibilities of the good blot out the cold of the expiring winter. Baseball, like the meteorological season itself, has started again.
Aren't you happy about it, too?
Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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