Of Baseball and Spring

Straight AheadIf God wanted me to leave the South, I'd do it; but this time of the year is what we live for in the South. It's late February, but not a moment too soon to think of baseball and spring if you're in Dixie. This is the time of the year when all the northern college baseball teams come down South to get ready to play baseball on their frozen fields up North come April and May when they start playing in their own conferences. High school and college baseball are going strong down here. Spring training games for the major league teams will start in a couple of weeks in Florida and Arizona. It's nice to be down South this time of year when spring actually starts in late February. We're strarting to have warm days and less frigid nights. In Maine, it wasn't spring until it was almost summer--and neither one lasted very long! Down here, the flowers and the flowering trees have started blooming. The azaleas and dogwoods will be showing forth their full splendor in no time. Some of the birds that left the North last winter never got much farther south than Alabama! Spring has always been my favorite season of the year; and baseball is one of my two favorite sports seasons--the other, of course, being football, and for totally different reasons. Yes, the fresh, warm air of spring will soon be a daily event. Bring it on! I didn't really mind the cold of Maine. And in Maine, when the daily temperature begins consistently to stay above freezing, it's a kind of spring in its own right. I'll never forget the excitement of the ice cream stand in Bucksport opening in mid-April, and all of us standing around eating ice cream, wearing our heavy coats and sweaters, in the open air with the temperature hovering around 40 degrees! We thought it was great! It was spring--in an unusual sort of way! But standing out in the sun, enjoying the warmth of springtime in Dixie, knowing that baseball games are being played at the high school, and knowing that you can even go outside at night without having to wear three layers of clothing, that's the kind of freedom you just don't take for granted after you've lived anywhere else. And if God chooses to move me somewhere else, that's fine. I'll have some wonderful memories of opening the back door on the first warm day many years ago, being surprised by the realization that a warm front had just come through and raised the temperature overnight, by twenty degrees--and being surprised. That was one year spring came early; and in the South, that happens with wonderful regularity.