Solid Geekery

March is a month of metamorphoses (maybe alliteration, too). Winter begins to trans-mutate into spring, cold weather starts its unsteady migration north, and my pseudo-seasonal affective disorder/endless winter rage gradually fades.

 And of course, March is a month of madness, or so says basketball. It’s so easy to get caught up in playoff mayhem and the suspense of a neck-in-neck game. What do I love best about March Madness? Made up words that only make sense for 1/12 of the year and are fused together in a Frankensteinian way. Can you say Bracketology? The study of….brackets? Well, I love the study of brackets as much as I love the existence of the basketball/time continuum, whereupon 5 minutes of game time takes up 90 minutes of your life and you don’t even care. It’s a venerable time warp.

But March is so much more than madness, it’s the Christmas Eve of sports, at least in my opinion. Two words: Opening Day. That’s right, the countdown has begun: 12 days until the official start of the 2008 baseball season. Call me an athletic bigot, but baseball is incomparable. I was raised in a family to whom Opening Day was as revered as Christmas. Some people love the crack of the bat, others find comfort in the distant sound of announcers on a radio, but for me it’s different. I love the slow motion recap of a double play, one where the ball is scooped up and thrown while the player is seemingly suspended in mid-air. I love that almost as much as I love to watch a runner steal home.

You know it’s going to be a good year when there’s been a bench clearing brawl before the season has even started. Raised on the Orioles, trained to hate the Yankees, matured to the Braves, and defected to the Red Sox, I have been in stadiums that are no longer standing and pensively stood in line to get Greg Maddux’s autograph.

March: fadeaway jump shots, sinking fastballs, and the promise of spring. Bring it on.