False Spring
It still counts for something
Where I live, we’re on the tail end of a short reprieve from the usual early March weather. It got over 70 degrees here yesterday, which brought my neighborhood to life. People out for walks, kids knocking on my door to see if my kids could play, and with daylight savings a sunset that didn’t come until after 7:00.
Avoid looking at the weather forecast, and you’d be easily fooled into thinking it was much later in the spring than the second week of March. Reality will set in a few days from now. This is often described as “false spring” as a way of dismissing the warmth. It somehow doesn’t count because it didn’t happen at the appropriate time of year.
Something akin to that feeling exists in baseball, too. Spring training games can be both refreshing and maddening. On one hand, it’s a blessing to have baseball back after the winter, but on the other, there’s not a lot of meaning that can be taken from the box scores. You just have to try and enjoy it for what it is.
To make matters worse, some years there are spring training fakeouts. Guys who look really good in March games but who disappear once the regular season begins. Here’s one example:
