Could it?

My daughter Kendi was three at the time. She was severely and profoundly handicapped, and in need of constant care and medical attention. Her mother and I almost lost her during the Christmas of 1985.

Her fragile little body couldn't handle another St. Louis winter. The doctor broke the bad news in her hospital room as her breathing was controlled by tubes and diodes and lights and things I just didn’t understand.

"I'm sure you love living here in St. Louis, but for the sake of your daughter's health, you need to move to Florida."

Two weeks later, we were packed and on the road.

The pavement remained snow covered and the sky remained gray and silent until the Georgia border. By Atlanta, the sky was blue and the frost was gone from the windshield. By Jacksonville, the temperature began to rise.

When we pulled into our new driveway in West Palm Beach, it was January.

January and 74 degrees.

As my wife began to make sense of the boxes and baggage that littered the front room of our new home, I made a quick run to the Home Depot by way of the West Palm Beach Municipal Stadium, the spring home of the Atlanta Braves and the Baltimore Orioles.

The gates were open and the grounds inviting. I walked in.

The grounds crew was milling around the infield, working in new dirt around the third base bag. I took a walking-tour of the complex. There were three batting cages and two regulation size fields. In the back of the complex were two diamonds with no accompanying outfields.

"For infield practice" a worker told me.

The Atlanta Braves and Montreal Expos shared the facility, and employees from both teams scurried about, painting and hammering, grooming and renovating, moving and stacking. It was less than a month before players reported.

I returned home and to help my wife unpack but found that she had done most of the work by herself. She probably thought I had taken a mistress.

She would have been right, of course. I had.

I made sure that I didn't start my new job until well after spring training began. I arrived at the complex close to 8:00 every morning and stayed until the players left, usually around 3:00 or so.

A very elderly man from New York told me that I'd see more players on the golf course than on the ball field. He laughed as he said it, seemingly very happy with himself. In his mouth was a pipe with a cigar pushed deeply into its bowl. I asked him about it.

He smiled and winked.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?