After a long arduous, frozen, gray winter, the first day of spring is a welcome arrival.

March can still be a bugger, don’t get me wrong. And April? For some reason, I feel the cold of forty degrees in April more than the fifteen degrees in February. I expect it to be cold in February but we are already a few weeks into spring when April arrives and I want it to be spring-like, and forty degrees is not spring-like.

Of course, since I have been living in Florida these last two years my right to complain about the cold of April or even February has been relinquished to the people I have left behind in the frozen tundra of New York and Long Island.

And while today is the first full day of spring, I always feel that spring really begins when pitchers and catchers report to spring training. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t spring in February, even in Florida. But, baseball has returned and that’s all that matters and little else is required to warm the cockles of an old man’s heart…but then there’s Saint Patrick’s Day. Another arrow in the quiver of spring.

As a kid, the arrival of spring inspired me and my friends to find our gloves and bats and balls (I’m sorry there’s just no other way to put it) and to meet in the schoolyard. Having done so for so many years you would have thought that we could have avoided the second rite of spring…throwing the softball too hard and throwing your arm out.

I can still feel the pain except that it is brought on by arthritis these days.

There were times that we had to bring a shovel to clean the field of yesterday’s snow. But it was still spring and we were officially entering the first day of summer countdown and the more important first day of summer vacation that would soon follow.

Happy Spring!