Figuring out the seasons

Today is the day when pro football starts in earnest and all the teams, other than the two teams which started on Thursday, begin the regular season. Since college football started last week and my ardor for baseball took a nose dive when it was clear that the Braves weren't going to catch either the Phillies or the Rockies and make the playoffs, I think that I will declare that Autumn has officially started. I know that some people will say that Fall can only start on September 21st, but that is just an arbitrary date which can mean little when Indian Summer rolls around and you find yourself wearing shorts and a t-shirt in October, or even November. This aint Michigan or Wisconsin. We haven't started pulling out the sweaters and checking out our coats.

But there again, with all this global warming, Summer weather can appear almost anytime, so you just can't depend on weather patterns and arbitrary dates to define your seasons. No, the only way to define Autumn is by the sports activities in the season.

For instance, the beginning of football season and dove season bring us Fall. When you suddenly wake up, look at the sports page and acknowledge basketball and hockey are playing in earnest, its Winter. It's not that they haven't been playing hockey and basketball since August. It's just that you have been programmed to notice when Winter arrives. Spring starts when March Madness is over. Summer actually begins with opening day of baseball, even though you actually start with Spring Training, which sounds like you are in training for Spring. But this is just a misunderstanding, because Spring Training is actually training which begins in the Winter in most of the states, but is the beginning of Summer in South Florida. We just call it Spring Training because of of the confusion.

So you see, you can easily define the seasons if you pay attention to the sports page. Of course, you can't do that as easily these days because most newspapers have shrunk to the point where your sports page is now part of the business/style/local news page. You just have to be more observant.