It's Been a Long, Cold Winter

(All photos from Boston.com)

Okay, two things:

1) David Ortiz is the goddamned Pied Piper of baseball, leading children and adults alike through the winter and delivering them into the magical time known as "Spring Training."

And 2) Damn, that dude is bad ass. He looks easily twenty feet tall in that picture. Look, I took a photography class or two in my time and I understand about composition and depth of field and all that stuff (not as well as Sam, but really, who does?) so I get that there's an angle thing working here as well as the fact that a large number of people in the background seem to be children and therefore, wee, but this photo makes Papi look like the Grand Poobah of Ass-Kickery.

And oh my god, I'm excited!

I don't think I fully understood how much I've missed baseball until I found myself, semi-inebriated and exhausted on Friday night, watching Olympic ice-dancing and debating which of the women ice dancers had Adam's apples. Keep in mind that I was a figure skater myself for many, many years and therefore, one might reason, not so hard on these poor people. Yeah, not so much.

And yesterday, I was delighted to learn that the satellite at the gym had been repaired meaning that instead of suffering through eighteen hours of Creed videos (no, I am not kidding), my tiny, little, personal television would bestow ESPN and SportsCenter upon me. Except you know what they saw fit to talk about for an hour? Goddamn NASCAR.

Yeah, it's been a long winter.

But look at that picture. And look at this one. And this one. And, oh my god, this one. But mostly? This one. Baseball, you guys! Real, shiny, new baseball!

I can't wait.