Pitchers and catchers. Spring training. This column is limbering up, ready for the new season, and feeling good. Leaner, fitter and happier. Welcome, good people, and observe this column preparing itself for Opening Day.

Just sit back and enjoy the following training montage. I imagine that awful Journey song will accompany it. It gets everywhere.

While the great and the good of the MLB are being put through their paces, your correspondent is in training himself. He’s reading Hemingway’s collected advice to writers, he’s thumbing through Bryson’s Dictionary for Writers and Editors, he’s perusing ’10 rules for writers’ in today’s Guardian and he’s scribbling furiously in various notebooks. He’s even thinking about baseball itself (who’d have thunk it?), scanning the Hardball Times Annual, SABR’s free Emerald Guide to Baseball (you need this, people!) and mock drafting like crazy.

And most importantly, your correspondent is honing his eye. Pitchers across the southern states are getting their eye in this week, and so am I. But it’s not easy. Now is time for fluff and bluster in MLB. Nothing of note is happening. This column isn’t looking so promising now, eh?

An aside: how good is life as a baseball professional? You get over four months off (if you’re lucky enough to miss those pesky play-offs), and then on your first few days back you just play catch and wander around in the sunshine. Those lucky things.

No such easy life for this columnist. I’ve had my nose to the proverbial grindstone, and have come up with the following. Bear with me, and be kind, dear reader.  Continue reading →