Pitchers and Catchers are in Kissimmee

It may still be chilly outside here in Maryland, but with the Astros' pitchers and catchers working out in Kissimmee, I know that spring is just around the corner. My tickets are already tucked away in my camera bag, and my flights to Florida are booked. Baseball is back!

I went to Houston last week for the funeral of a favorite aunt - a wonderful, intelligent, and creative person (although not a baseball fan). After the funeral, we went back to a cousin's home for lunch, and I found myself at a table with several other Astros fans. While this is a normal occurrence for people who actually live in Houston, for me it's a rare thrill to be able to talk baseball with others who cheer for my team - the lonely aspect of being a Fan in Exile. I turned on my laptop and set it up to do a slide show of pictures from Spring Training last year, getting more appreciative oohs and aahs than I ever get at home. (Especially from the women, when I got to the closeups of Brad Ausmus.) I had thought a bit, during the long winter (any months without baseball seem to drag on and on), whether I should just give it up. Why be a Fan in Exile for my original home team - especially now that some of my team favorites are gone? Now that Washington has a team, why not change my allegiance? I can just hop on a Metro train from my office and go to Nationals games all summer. I don't mind if they are not a winning team this year - God knows that I cheered for the Astros enough in the bad old days of my childhood, when I hardly ever saw them win. I always kind of liked cheering for the underdog.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to see a lot of regular season games in a stadium, not just on my computer? Wouldn't it be nice to be cheering for the home team for a change?

I really did think about this, for a few minutes during the off season. And that was it. Then I went back to reading Astros.com and the sports section of the Chronicle, catching up on trade rumors and checking out the prospects. Waiting for Spring Training, so I could make my annual pilgrimage to Kissimmee.

Pitchers and catchers had their first practice today. First thing after the Sabbath ended tonight,* I turned on my laptop to see how it went. WOOO HOOO - baseball is back!

* The blogger server must be on the West Coast - the time stamp on my entries are 3 hours early.