Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 17, 1995 TAG: 9503170013
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-11 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The haymaker won't be emerging out of nowhere, either.
It will be coming down from the north in the form of one more savagely cruel blast of winter. Of this we can guarantee.
We have shed our bulky warmups, we track-and-fielders, to expose our pasty-colored limbs to the warming and cancer-causing rays of the sun for the first time this season.
We have removed our golf clubs from behind the stack of newspapers that never made it to the recycling bin, pausing as we do so to wipe the mildew from the outside zippered compartment of our bag.
We have examined our tennis rackets for signs of frayed strings as we open a fresh can of balls with the familiar whoosh of expelled gas and its peculiar chemical smell.
We have patched and inflated the flat tire on our bicycle.
We have dribbled the grass-stained soccer ball out of the hall closet, through the front door and into the bright light of day.
We have broken out the bats, dumped the sack of baseballs, untangled the catcher's gear and begun to stretch and rotate arms as stiff as beef jerky. We have pounded and punched first basemen's mitts and other gloves rendered as rigid as rigor mortis by disuse.
We have looked into the clear blue sky, the warm breezes blowing softly across our faces, and smiled the smile of souls released from the netherworld.
Our hearts are as high as the Blue Ridge, our spirits soaring like red-tailed hawks on the zephyr.
This is springtime and gladdened are we.
But here we must pause for a word of caution. For inevitably, our soaring hearts are destined to be flung back to Earth like so much roadside debris.
Yes friends, what we are experiencing this week is false spring.
It is an evil and hateful trick nature likes to play. Thus please recall the message imparted by those public servants charged with protecting the gullible among us from swindlers, confidence men and other scoundrels: If something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
And this run of splendid weather is assuredly too good to be true.
Many apologies for such a somber message on St. Patrick's Day, but the anthropologists also speak of the dark and mournful side of the Irish soul.
Enjoy it while you can, because the cold rain and snow soon will be falling anew.
The bare limbs of the track-and-fielders again will be pinched and flailed by the bitter winds.
The noses of the soccer players will be gnawed, their toes stung and their fingers left numbed and aching from the cold.
The hands of the baseball players will be reduced to two huge bee stings from foul tips off the end of a frigid bat.
The manager of the girls' tennis team, the ninth-grader who aspires to a spot on the No. 3 doubles team, will be left whimpering because she took only a thin cotton jacket to practice that afternoon.
The curses at the merciless weather will come in a cloud of gray vapor from between chapped lips.
Misery will take no comfort from company.
False spring is the enemy of all, particularly the athlete and most especially the one who never sees that vicious sucker punch coming.
Ray Cox is a Roanoke Times & World-News sportswriter.
by CNB