Spring Training Vibes Check: Trevor Story Will Save The Red Sox Defense
And Jarren Duran is blonde!
There are few things in sports that I have a more complicated relationship with than Spring Training. Just when you think you can’t take another day of the social isolation, bracing winds, and salt stains that come with winter, there’s Spring Training to give you some hope, to remind you that the world will look and feel radically different in just a matter of weeks. You get to know the new guys, you gawk at the weird haircuts on the vets, you swoon at clips of a uniformed Pedro working with the young pitchers, certain he’s about to turn them into all-stars. Baseball is back and it is glorious.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73141586/2005090582.0.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
And then the games start. You blow off work to catch the first few innings of a split-squad game in Dunedin only to see a lineup full of non-roster invitees. The thrill of a new start begins to fade as the games become routine, background noise at best. And yet they keep going, week after week, giving you a tease of baseball but holding back the real thing. The last two weeks of March are torture.
But after one of the weirdest and most depressing Red Sox offseasons in recent memory, I’ve damn near used up my cache of cynicism. I want to embrace the coming season, despite the disappointment of the last four months (years?), and that means embracing the next few glorious weeks until Spring Training becomes something to get past rather than something to enjoy.
