{"id":1275,"date":"2024-03-16T10:51:52","date_gmt":"2024-03-16T10:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/16\/in-search-of-spring\/"},"modified":"2024-03-16T10:51:52","modified_gmt":"2024-03-16T10:51:52","slug":"in-search-of-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/16\/in-search-of-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"In Search of Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"In<\/div>


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Baseball devotees are known to anticipate the onset of spring with a special fervor. In February 1971, John Hutchens wrote in The Times<\/a>, \u201cHe is beginning to emerge from his cotton\u2010wool haze, the hopelessly addicted baseball fan for whom life \u2014 if that\u2019s the word for it \u2014 has amounted to nothing much since the last play of the 1970 World Series.\u201d This is the kind of hyperbolic perspective on the seasons I identify with. I\u2019m not a die-hard baseball fan, but I know the agony of which Hutchens writes, the way life seems to be on hold during the winter months.<\/p>\n

Jerry Kraus, a snowbird from Utica, N.Y., who works at Clover Park during spring training, seemed to have the right idea, leaving the Northeast for Florida when the weather gets dicey. He was so in sync with the springtime vibe that he caught a foul ball right in his hand. (Baseball\u2019s not Jerry\u2019s only sport; he runs a Wordle league in which participants are given rules for letters they\u2019re not allowed to use for their first word. On the day I met him, the rule was \u201cNo worries,\u201d so your first guess couldn\u2019t contain the letters W, O, R, I, E or S.)<\/p>\n

In his 1990 book \u201cMen at Work: The Craft of Baseball,\u201d George Will tsk-tsked descriptions of the game as \u201cunhurried\u201d or \u201cleisurely,\u201d calling such observations \u201cnonsense on stilts.\u201d For the players, he writes, \u201cthere is barely enough time between pitches for all the thinking that is required.\u201d But for this casual spectator, \u201cno worries\u201d could be baseball\u2019s official motto. Being outdoors in the sunshine and fresh air, things do feel slower and easier. The fretting slows down. I love that baseball has long been considered America\u2019s national pastime. A pastime is something that makes the passing of time pleasant. Isn\u2019t that what we\u2019re longing for in the winter months? Something that makes time not just tolerable but enjoyable?<\/p>\n

By the time I left Florida, it was pouring rain and even a little chilly. How was I supposed to take springtime home with me, I wondered petulantly. It was still raining in New York when I landed. Spring isn\u2019t just weather, of course, and it certainly makes no promises about rain. I\u2019m trying to resist clich\u00e9, to keep from saying something akin to \u201cspring is a state of mind,\u201d even though I wish it were.<\/p>\n

I went looking for spring and I found it where spring breakers find it every year, already in full, exuberant swing in the Sunshine State. My own official shedding of woolen garments and denunciation of seasonal funk will occur on Tuesday, when spring finally arrives. But having experienced 24 hours of spring\u2019s full pageant, my own little preseason, I feel slightly pacified. Perhaps I can be patient as spring establishes itself, offer the season a little grace as it clicks into place. (N.Y.C. temperature as I write this: 36 degrees, but there\u2019s definite blue among the clouds.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Baseball devotees are known to anticipate the onset of spring with a special fervor. In February 1971, John Hutchens wrote in The Times, \u201cHe is beginning to emerge from his cotton\u2010wool haze, the hopelessly addicted baseball fan for whom life \u2014 if that\u2019s the word for it \u2014 has amounted to nothing much since the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/03\/16\/multimedia\/16themorning-ambriefing-web\/16themorning-nl-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1988,1989],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1277,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions\/1277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}