There is nothing like the sound of the crack of the bat and the smell of fresh cut grass to remind you that it is baseball season. While I can’t personally hear the bats from my house, the weather is quite nice and it feels like baseball weather. I’m thinking about putting on some sunscreen to sit at my computer, just to get the authentic spring training smell in my house.

I spent a few years covering spring training down in Arizona, and I’ll tell you this — it is one of the greatest assignments a reporter can get. Sunburn be damned, nothing beats sitting in the bleachers (screw the press box) for a few innings, surrounded by college girls, taking in a ballgame with some headphones on, then wondering down into the depths of the clubhouse to do my interviews when the starters leave the game. Once I got my quote, it was back to the bleachers, take a few notes, work on a few stories, chew some tobacco, then call it a day at three o’clock. That’s not a bad day at the office.

So to watch spring training start from a different state is bittersweet. Nothing compares to baseball season, so it’s great to see it get underway, but it sucks to not be there covering it.

It’s nice to say it feels like baseball season, but it won’t really be baseball season until a game with some meaning is played. For some, that’s the World Baseball Classic, which starts on March 5. Rosters have been set.

If international competition isn’t your thing, then you’ll just have to wait until April 5.

Hopefully we can survive a full baseball season without FJM keeping us company and sorting through the crazy for us.

Tiger on one channel, live baseball on the next — spring has arrived.

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