Pitchers and Catchers Report

In America, February has two Groundhog Days: the one celebrated on February 2, when the presumably immortal Punxsutawney Phil either does or doesn't make his annual appearance in Pennsylvania, and the other Groundhog Day, later in the month, when pitchers and catchers first poke their heads up out of dugouts each year in Arizona and Florida, signaling, not the arrival of baseball season itself, but the nearness, the imminent arrival of the thing. Today's that day for the San Francisco Giants.

This is a good first sign. Here comes the battery now, the artillery term naming the pair responsible for handling the projectile ball, whose movement, if the pitcher will ever stop just standing there and throw the thing, defines the action of the game, such as it is. All motion in the game is attendant on the potent motions of the famous baseball, and that ball's motion, for better or worse, is initiated by the very fellows who've shown up first to training camp, who make up the game's battery, to stretch and jog and horse around prior to the arrival of the rest of the team, to ease in to spring training itself, spring training a grueling round of practices, games, really vigorous stretching and really vigorous jogging and horsing around that with any luck will turn the club's players into a team and ready for baseball season itself, still weeks away, just as spring itself is or isn't due to arrive in that span, depending on what Phil may have had to say about it this year, which I regret to say I missed.