Time comes to a blessed halt at Spring Training

By Jon Weisman

GLENDALE, Ariz. — This is the year that Spring Training seduced me.

I had enjoyed my two previous trips, in 1993 and 2014, enjoyed the juxtaposition of Major League ballplayers with minor-league atmosphere. How could you not appreciate the uniqueness of the scene, how could you not see the romance?

And yet, I don’t know that I ever found it as simply lovely as I did this week at Camelback.

Keep in mind, I’m not like the pros in this organization. My trip was all of five days, not six weeks. I’m here and gone, with only a snapshot of the grind that preseason life becomes. I also managed to avoid the scorching heat that can break the spirit of any man. The Fahrenheits never passed 80, and the weather brought monotony-defying combinations of sun, wind, clouds and harmless rain.

For my short visit, the peace and beauty of the scene, the feeling of serenity threading through the earnest labor on the ballfields surrounding me, left me wanting more.

Odd, isn’t it, that I can sympathize with the ongoing concerns about MLB’s pace of play … then look down at my phone out on a distant field, see that three hours have passed and wonder where they went.

Or maybe it’s that this year, I’ve felt a new desire to slow down time. In recent years, I’ve strained to get from Point A to Point B on the calendar, trying to get tasks behind me so that I don’t have to fret them. Then, during the past few months, I became newly aware of how my kids seem to be racing away from their youth.

It was something shy of a New Year’s resolution, but I began the year by making a conscious effort not to be so focused on the future at the expense of the present. Two months in, it has paid off.

I know we’re all eager to get to the regular season, when the games count. But to take a walk in the park, through ballfields stripped to baseball’s essence, to feel the rays and the breeze and the dust of Arizona, to go out 0-0 and come back 0-0, neither a winner nor a loser, just a part of a timeless scene, is painlessly cathartic.

My dad turns 80 in May. I think I need to spend a day or two like this with him.