As April moves toward May, I still won’t know what is real and what isn’t. The fielders’ hands will still be cold. Some of the pitchers will be getting nervous looking for their rhythm. Some of the batters will take advantage and others won’t. The batting averages of the league leaders will be ridiculous. Some teams will have winning streaks and I will make little changes to my preseason predictions.
Soon enough, most of the obscure names will fall from their positions at the top of the leaders’ lists. The standings will no longer look as if they’ve been shuffled by a crazy person. The season’s one or two real surprises will settle into substance. The rest of the anomalies will drop like cartoon characters, when they finally realize they’ve run off the end of the cliff.
The leaves will be back on the trees. The baseball articles will have better information, but I won’t read them with as much urgency. I will forget there was so recently a time without baseball and without leaves. I will be in the middle of it all over again.