Spring Training Matters More Than You’d Think — Here’s Why
Baseball season is coming. It’s not quite here yet, but it’s close. First, though: spring training. The habit is not to think much about these boring March games. But this year feels different. The buzz around the Blue Jays still hasn’t died down after the short off-season months, and even though there’s nothing yet to root for, we’re still tuning in to the goings-on in Dunedin, surreptitiously watching them in the corner of our monitors at work, escaping to the languid sounds of afternoon ball games until Opening Day mercifully arrives in April.
You should be doing the same.
It’s true that spring training games don’t matter. They’re mostly just a chance for players to shake off the dust of the off-season and limber up before the score actually counts. These games are when managers experiment with different lineups and watch as players you’ve never heard of — young guys and way-too-old guys, both — take the field. In spring training, you’ll see pitchers throw pitches they don’t have and players play positions they don’t play. Hell, even Sportsnet is using these games as a chance to experiment with their lineups, throwing print guys into the radio booth just for fun. It’s all a bit of a farce.
Quite honestly, we all have better things to do than tune in — and that’s exactly why you should. Above all else, spring training is about hope. It’s about the expectation of the coming season, the unsullied camaraderie between teammates old and new, the glory of being outdoors, in the sunshine, once again. It’s a time when players on minor league contracts — or no contracts at all — sprint and fumble and grind their way across the diamond in hopes of making the team. It’s a time when superstars like MVP Josh Donaldson will get in the broadcast booth for a couple of innings to chat about the game, or when the Mets’ Yoenis Cespedes, fresh off signing a $75-million contract will come to the park in a different, more outrageous car everyday just so fans can take pictures. (His finale? An actual horse.)
We can share this hope. We can feed off it. We can shed what we’re doing and get away from the still-cold winter up north and, for a couple of hours everyday this month, be part of that good time. So stop what you’re doing and put the radio on, even just in the background. (Sportstnet is broadcasting the games on the radio all month, and the first televised Jays game is tomorrow.) Imagine you’re in the soft Florida sun. Be excited — if not about the games themselves, then about anything, whatever it is you’re looking forward to. It’s almost — but not quite — time for baseball. And that’s cause for hope.
