My earliest and most vivid memory of March baseball is from 1972 (or so).
1972 was a very different time for a young baseball nut. Back then, a Met fan's winter was a cold, barren wasteland. A tundra. No internet, no WFAN, no reading the paper from the back, scrounging for a scrap or a morsel about baseball, no nothing. This was still 4 years from free-agency, so you also weren't getting a Delgado, or losing a Piazza in the off-season. Baseball just ended in September and that was it. All you had as a kid were Strat-o-Matic and baseball cards to get you through till March.
When you are a kid, time passes a lot more slowly than it does for adults. When you are 9 years old, the off-season, a mere 6 months, might as well be 6 years. In 1972, the 180-day off-season literally represented 5% of my life. The point I am belaboring and beating to death is this - when the season ended, and Lyndsey, Bob and Ralph signed off for the final time ("See you in the spring everyone"), you were in for a long, lonnnnnng, baseball free winter.
At 9, as ravenous as I was about baseball, I was not all that conscious of the calendar, so I was never aware of exactly when live baseball was about to re-enter into my life. As cliche as it sounds, I actually remember 'like it was yesterday' picking up the TV Section of the paper and seeing the beautiful words in bold "Channel 9, 1:35 PM, Mets vs. Cardinals , Pre-season Baseball". I felt like my heart rate doubled as I read it again and checked that I had the right day and time. I can only equate the discovery that day to carelessly looking at a lottery ticket and discovering you are a winner.
As a grownup, I am able to keep myself fortified and feed my "baseball jones" . I read Met websites religiously over lunch and talk about the minutia of every move Omar Minaya makes or doesn't make with Kenny, Dave Rosen, and Will. I return to baseball each spring with a totally different head than I did as a child. I think that since we are now able to "snack between meals", we are no longer starved for baseball when we come to the figurative table for dinner in March.
At 43, I couldn't be happier when pitchers and catchers report to Port Saint Lucie. I am older and while I am still hungry for that first pitch, I am no longer famished like I was in 1972. I kind of wish I was. Like chasing a long-gone buzz, I remember every year, if just for a minute, the incredible excitement I felt that day when I was 9.....when I realized my seemingly endless wait for baseball was almost over.
