"People who write about Spring Training not being necessary have never tried to throw a baseball" --Sandy Koufax

"Spring Training means flowers, people coming outdoors, sunshine, optimism, and baseball. Spring Training is a time to think about being young again." --Ernie Banks

With spring comes that old cliché of hope and newness. I could write a hackneyed piece about how everyone starts on an even playing field at Spring Training and that anyone can make the team, but I won't. I could talk about the fresh-faced rookie at his first camp and the feelings that he must experience when he gets to play with his idols for the first time, but again I won't. I could even talk about how the Yankees must have put out a call for players with epic names because somehow they've wrangled Zoilo, Zelous, and Adonis into the same clubhouse. But...

...I won't. You’re lucky, too, because I wanted to write a short story that starred Zoilo, Zelous, and Adonis as gods of a mythical land made only of baseball diamonds. It would look something like this.

Instead, let’s talk about the strangeness of baseball fandom.

Baseball fans love Spring Training. Other sports don’t do preseason the way that baseball does. There are exhibition games and camps and practices, but Spring Training is a unique and storied culture that’s as big a thrill for fans as the World Series. It’s because of all of the cheesy things I’ve already mentioned and so many more. This year, Spring Training was a totally new and different experience for me. I got to go to my first Spring Training game a couple weeks ago, and I have a friend who’s been in a big league camp all spring. In prior years, I’ve just watched Spring Training from my couch, a bar, or my bed (I sleep with MLB Network on, but that’s not much of a confession). This year, though, has been a new and interesting perspective on the game in its training phase, and I’m sad to see it come to an end. While I’m ready to see how things go in the regular season and to see if this friend of mine makes a mark in the Majors (since we’re down to the end, I’m not jinxing him by giving details here. You know how baseball players are with their superstitions. We’ll revisit this another time), I love the laidback vibe of the game I attended this March at Champion Stadium, and I love that I just turned around and started talking to the two old guys behind me like we were old pals. That’s baseball, though. Baseball is sunny afternoons in crowded seats. Baseball is overpriced beer in souvenir cups and awkward early spring tan lines. Baseball is conversations with strangers to fill the breaks between innings—but not because it’s dull. Because it’s part of the game. Baseball fans are the sharing type. We share stories, statistics, and factoids, but it’s never really a competition. It’s more of a collective. It’s a gathering of people whose passion for a game means having a head full of facts that are useless to anyone outside that collective. When we get together in a ballpark, we thrive on each other’s information.

“This guy pitching had Tommy John two years ago when he was in college. He looks stronger than ever now.”

“That top-ranked prospect they put all that money into is hitting below the Mendoza line for the spring. Hope it’s just growing pains.”

“This guy’s dad played minor league ball in the Reds organization; it’s really great to see his kid getting a shot now.”

“Their designated hitter lost 25 pounds in the off season. Now he’s stealing bases like Henderson.”

These kinds of statements about perfect strangers are only important among perfect strangers who are just as perfectly strange. In other words, your friends and family don’t care, but other baseball fans do. That’s what sets baseball apart from other sports in my experience. I could be wrong, but it’s only at baseball games that I’ve turned in my seat to face a group of people I’d never seen before and struck up a conversation. Well, it’s the only place I’ve done it successfully. In most other situations, you’re just as likely to get a confused glare as an answer, but at a baseball game, you’re likely to make a friend.

At least for the next nine innings. Then you’re likely to go on your merry way. Or, as in a handful of cases, you make a lifelong friend who you can call the next time you’re in town so neither of you has to go to the game alone. Maybe it’s the pace of the game. Maybe it’s baseball’s aging fan base. I’d like to believe it’s the invisible connection between people who know the game. I’d rather believe in a divine intervention that bonds me to other baseball fans even before we cross paths. It’s more poetic that way, and baseball is always poetry.

Next week, that poetry takes on a different tone. The games start to really count. We get to watch our old heroes do what they do best, and we get to discover new heroes who might do it even better. We get to argue over pitch counts and starting rotations, old school stats and sabermetrics, and sometimes whose beard is most awesome. This is baseball. This is another year of dirt and diamonds, and I couldn’t be more ready if I tried.

Now someone sing the national anthem so we can PLAY BALL!