By Ed Piper
First, my apologies to all my Padres fans readers out there. As you know, I grew up in Dodgerland, and I'm pretty stoked on them, though I always want to say that I am a baseball fan and I thrill to the sound of bat on ball and the great catch--whether that is Padres, Cardinals (my wife), or Tamba Bay from Timbuktu.
The occasion is the start of Spring Training, so I just got my ST hat in the mail today. I may not be attending the event in Greater Phoenix in person this year, so this is my way of celebrating. Spring Training, besides "hope eternal" phrasing, is truly when everyone is at a blank slate, and all things are possible.
One memory is a quick conversation I had with Bud Black, when he was managing the Colorado Rockies after a term with the Padres. I said to him as we were near one another at the Rockies' training site, "They had an article on you, and it was pretty solid." He, not missing a beat in interacting with a member of the public in a very public setting, said, "Oh, was it pretty positive?" I said, "Yes, they did a really good job on it, and said you were good at", I think, assessing pitching talent, or something like that.
Brief, quick, but that is the kind of interaction you can have in the informal atmosphere of Spring Training--you could never hope for a moment like that at a ballgame during the season with eight billion people around.
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