Red Sox-Athletics: Ides of March Can Mean Only One Thing

While the historical significance of Caesar's fate on the Ides of March is not lost, for me and many baseball fans the Ides of March means that baseball season is not far behind. For Red Sox and A's fans the wait is even shorter. Those two teams will open the 2008 MLB season on March 25th in Tokyo Japan.

Teams have worked since last November rebuilding their rosters becuse in this era of MLB teams change from season to season. Free agent signings and losses, big ticket players are traded so teams will get compensation before losing the player to free agency. Four time World Series winning managers are non-renewed - or offered a significant pay cut to put the onus of leaving on the manager - because their teams haven't won a World Series in seven seasons.

The teams spend the second half of February and March in Arizona and Florida - the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues respectively - as players awaken their skills with the bats and gloves and the pitchers stretch out slowly as they prepare their arms for the long season. Unlike when I started watching baseball when players worked winter jobs and showed up to spring training needing to get in shape and lose fifteen pounds. Today's players make enough money even at the minimum ML salary to stay in shape and work on baseball throughout the winter.

As always the start of a new season is awaited with great anticipation. From the time when I was young it is one of my favorite days of the entire year. It is the beginning of the 162 games in 183 days marathon. The ups and downs are both unavoidable and what makes baseball such a great game. The games they should have won, the games they have no right winning, the walk off home runs, the blown calls by managers and umpires are all part of the game's beauty.

So, on March 25th I'll find a way to have to report to work late so that I can watch the first game of the season - starting time 6:00 a.m. EDT. The second game I'll have to watch on replay that afternoon on NESN and games 3 & 4 means being up late because of the 10:05 start of the 2 west coast games. Then there will only be 158 games left to watch, the earth will be warming it will be light until 8:30 in the evening and the crack of the bats will be filling the air. Ahh as winter fades - rather slowly in Central NH - my mind turns to baseball and that's nice, very nice.