Steve Christilaw: Warm sun: is such a spring sports tease

There is a deeply embedded cynic in all of us.

At least when it comes to spring weather.

It’s not just a “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” thing.

It’s more like Charlie Brown and the football.

Mother Nature dangles a nice day here and there. She entices you with a little morning sunshine after weeks of gloomy, foggy mornings. Next thing you know you’ve slipped on a patch of ice and are flat on your back.

Don’t fall for it (no pun intended).

Tulips and crocuses always, always fall for this gambit and pop their heads above ground. They take the bait and end up covered in snow. And ice.

Flowers have no sense of guile.

But after that old football gets snatched away at the last second a few dozen times, we get jaded.

Start thinking about your garden? Oh, sure. We’ll think about it. We’ll plan for it. But to actually roll up our sleeves and start digging, we’re going to need a little more than a Wilson teed up for us to kick.

Taking the snow tires off your car? Ask me again after we figure out the Final Four. Or the calendar changes to June. Something like that.

This week started with a classic Mother Nature dangle. The sun was out and we started looking for where we left our sunglasses. We left the winter coat in the closet and ventured forth without a sweater. More than a few guys brought out the cargo shorts and flip-flops and, voila – pasty white, winter skin was on display all over downtown Spokane (an even better reason for finding where we left those darned shades).

But the snow shovel never left that corner of the porch.

We, the veterans of a few dozen Pacific Northwest springs, we know better.

We know that the sun may be out this morning. But we may be shoveling snow again tonight. If not this afternoon.

Spring training baseball was being played in the glorious sunshine of Arizona and Florida and Facebook is chock full of pictures from friends and colleagues who have journeyed to the desert to watch Cactus League baseball.

Some have even been known to call you at your desk in the middle of the afternoon to offer you an update on whatever game they’re watching.

Meanwhile, New England braced for a third nor’easter in the last 10 days or so – that brand of winter storm that dumps snow on Boston and Buffalo and makes the idea of spring a punchline for another week.

Groundhogs? Bah! Humbug.

It’s so bad back there that I am betting several Major League teams, particularly Boston and Cleveland, will refuse to leave when spring training ends and will start their season in warm and sunny environs.

High school football schedules are printed in big, block letters and hung in the windows of boosters and supporters. Basketball schedules get turned into calendars and passed around so that you can plan your season accordingly – especially those state tournaments.

It’s the sports version of “save the date.”

Baseball? Softball?

In April, when the showers start so that there can be May flowers, the schedules get written in pencil. And athletics directors never press down very hard because they know they’re going to have to use the eraser end to make changes. Daily.

March games? For those games it’s best to do your planning on a dry-erase board. The kind that can be swiped with a couple of fingers to remove all evidence of a planned game.

But that’s what we love about those diamond-based games.

Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains. Or snows. Or hails. Or sleets. Or all of the above all at the same time.

Baseball, and softball, teaches patience. And it teaches you to adapt.

It teaches us about the nature of spring. And about life.

Before you can swing a bat, you have to drag a rake.

You have to understand that a ball diamond won’t drain until the layer of frost under the surface thaws. Ice, it turns out, makes a pretty good dam and all that water on top has no place to go. You learn about using a rake so that the bags of special dirt that soaks up the moisture can work its magic. Later on, you learn about how to manicure the grass to help your infielders scoop up ground balls, but at first, you learn how to diagnose and treat things like snow mold.

Because life only gets interesting when you understand the intricacies of snow mold.

Let the sunshine pour down, Mother Nature.

We’ll soak it up while it’s out there. We may even put on a pair of shorts.

But we’re making no plans for tomorrow.