Going Batty

I must have written a couple of million times about how much I hate exaggeration, so with 87 feet of snow on the ground here in Baltimore, no wonder my thoughts turn to baseball.

One of the givens about life here as "old man winter" starts drawing his last breaths is that, in mid-February, some chuckling sportscaster will ALWAYS come on, right after a weather forecast calling for snow, and chuckle about how many more days it is until pitchers and catchers report for spring training down in Fla. This is as unavoidable as people saying they would buy a snow blower, but that would only mean that it would never snow again enough to use it.

But as we shoveled our way to freedom the other day, I kept thinking about baseball ("What, and miss my turn at bat?") because the weather people were also calling for a couple of inches of "the white stuff" next week. This forecast for additional white hell did not induce panic in the streets, as it would have prior to the introduction of two blizzards in four days, as we enjoyed this past week.

Just as baseball players swing weighted bats in the on-deck circle, making their real lumber seem lighter once they finally get up to the plate, shoveling several tons of snow from one's driveway and front walk and deck makes a couple of inches of snow seem like nuttin', honey!