Dreaming of Spring Training Camp

One more football game and then sports fans can begin dreaming of sunny spring baseball in Florida and Arizona. Sometimes I catch myself wondering why I spend my winters in Wisconsin but then I remember nobody beats our summers.

The start of February assures me that pitchers and catchers will be reporting to spring training camp in a couple of weeks. I love this time of year. Whenever the pitchers and catchers reported to camp when I was a kid, so did I. I grabbed baseball gloves, a ball, and a shovel and shoveled the snow out of our backyard. I shoveled and shoveled until I saw a good sixty feet and six inches of grass for my Dad and me to play catch on when he returned from a day's worth of welding in our Wisconsin winter's wind chills. We ended our February spring training camp sessions with Dad throwing me some snowball batting practice sessions.

February means spring's renewal of buds, birds, blades of grass, and bugs with another Major League Baseball season of Milwaukee Brewers, bats, balls, and beer is close and that gives me hope, hope that our days will last a little longer and the Brewers might win their first ever World Series championship.

It won't bother me if the groundhog predicts a few extra weeks of winter tomorrow morning, for I know I can shovel my way into my childhood spring training camp in just a couple of weeks, giving me ample time to assure that my throwing arm will be in playing shape for some tailgating toss by the time Opening Day rolls around in April.

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