T.S. Eliot be damned. April is most decidedly NOT the cruellest month. For Canadians, that distinction belongs–now and forever–to February, a month that apparently lasts forever.
It must have been close to minus-30 Celsius, factoring in the wind chill factor, in Montreal Monday morning as bus stops filled with awaiting riders perfecting their highland flings in desperate attempts to generate a bit of warmth underneath tightly-drawn parkas. Sometimes, the flings actually work.
There are, naturally, other methods to deal with this cruelty. One can adopt the totem pole position, rigid and stock still, glaring straight ahead and wondering how late the bus is running. Sometimes that actually works.
For this writer, the bonanza approach that works best occurs in the mind. Call it the “Think Spring Training” method.
Spring training is when North America’s baseball teams take up their exercises and practice to prepare us all for the what everyone hopes will be a long, hot summer of pennant races and balmy nights.
Spring training, it should be noted, takes place in Arizona and Florida, where Canada’s team, the Toronto Blue Jays, have taken up residence for the next six weeks. In April, they will come to Montreal to complete Grapefruit League play before opening the season against the Yankees in New York on April 6.
Lucky reporters, assigned to cover, the events, will report back dutifully every night on television and every morning in the newspapers. The reports provide a welcome alternative to our daily realities but tend to soothe only briefly. Still, soothe they do; sometimes, sometimes enough to get us through the morning wait at the bus stop.One of the reporters basking in the Florida sun is Richard Griffin, baseball columnist for the Toronto Star, and a regular contributor to RCI.
He joined us from the Blue Jays base camp in Dunedin, Florida.
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