Happy Spring!!!!!!!!!

I won't bore you with any mediocre greeting-card grade references to spring and renewal, those things are a foregone conclusion, and I never make mention of things that everyone already knows.

What you may not, know, however, is that opening day is in eleven days (April 1st), thirteen days for the Padres (April 3rd)...but now you do.

Appropriately, my son has a ball game today and my daughter is playing a mini softball game, that is, if there is no rain out. What does it mean when it rains the first day of spring?

I could say it's cleansing, washing away, feeding the new... a simple but fitting symbol. No matter what kind of life you lead, there is something you must be happy to let go of, see the end of, relinquish, or release. Sometimes it's everything, other times, like where I am right now, I'm holding tightly the good in my life like a two-run lead in the ninth, gripping my blessings tightly as if they're a ball getting ready to leave my glove - because there will be another time when I am tested, and I can fall back on these days when they are committed to memory. So I am taking all of this in; the feel of the rain, the sight of green, green grass ("the thrill of the grass"), the sound of a "pop" when a strike hits a glove, the taste of citrus with bell peppers and coarse salt (or nachos, third base side).

I don't need a convincing lead...I just need what I have.

I have a good feeling about the rain.