Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
March 26, 2004, Washington Post

Spring Fever -- Catch It

Spring is here. To sports fans, and especially kids who love sports, springtime is more than just a date on the calendar or the sighting of the first cherry blossom. And spring is not just that time of year when, as American poet e.e. cummings said, the world becomes "puddle-wonderful." No, spring is when the weather is finally getting warmer and a whole bunch of cool sports stuff happens.

So to sports folks, spring means . . .

• Ten thousand kids asking, "Mom, do you know where my baseball glove is?"on that first warm Saturday morning. (Which may be tomorrow!)

• The crack of the bat. Or these days, the "ka-boing" of an aluminum bat.

• The smell of neat's-foot oil, or some other goop that kids put in their baseball gloves to loosen them up after a long, cold winter.

• The time when the indoor soccer season ends and the outdoor soccer season begins.

• Practicing your bicycle kick or backfoot pass on the warm, green grass.

• Fabulous Freddy Adu making his pro debut for the D.C. United.

• The Masters golf tournament. Opening Day in baseball. And a gazillion playoff games in basketball and hockey.

• The Washington Capitals putting away their hockey sticks and dusting off their golf clubs.

• The Washington Wizards talking about how good they are going to be . . . next year.

• Redskins mini-camp! And all those important stories about who is going to be the Skins' third-string quarterback.

• Kids practicing lacrosse by bouncing the orange rubber ball against the brick wall at the local schoolyard.

• Red plastic hockey nets that appear on empty tennis courts and parking lots for street hockey games that go on all afternoon long.

• Pickup basketball in shorts and a T-shirt.

• Jump rope and double Dutch.

• Makeshift ramps and halfpipes constructed out of cardboard and wooden crates so tomorrow's Tony Hawks can practice their latest skateboarding tricks.

• Daylight saving time and the longer days that whisper, whatever your game is, you can play it after dinner.