One Week!

It's been a long, cold, lonely winter (as George Harrison famously put it) but now there's only one week until pitchers and catchers report for spring training and that means it's time to switch on the optimism for the upcoming baseball season. The Braves (my team) have made a number of moves since the end of last season, and it's up in the air how many of them will turn out (especially since they mostly depend on comebacks by former stars like Troy Glaus and Billy Wagner). But even setting that aside, it's going to be fun to watch Atlanta this year since at some point their young stud Jason Heyward (seen above) is due to make his major league debut. All reports indicate Heyward is poised to be the next superstar of the game, and although such predictions are often tinged with wishful thinking, in this case it seems to be a consensus even outside of the Braves organization. So even if the team struggles, it looks like we'll at least be able to watch how this youngster makes the adjustment to the bigs, and that promises to be a lot of fun. Over the next few weeks I should also receive my copy of Baseball Prospectus (which I consider the finest annual available), which will help me dope out the prospects for the rest of the leagues before the regular season starts. I'm sure there'll be another blast or two of cold and snow before then, but with baseball on the horizon, it's going to be a lot easier to tough my way through...