Mike Celizic

In some parts of the world, 2006 will be remembered for the inaugural edition of the World Baseball Classic. But, in the United States, where fans of international play are left to resort to the sour-grapes gambit, it has become the Year Without Spring Training.

I know that pitchers and catchers reported to camp a month or more ago, but, being preoccupied with the misadventures of Bode Miller and the rest of the United States Olympic Team, I must confess I missed the actual event.

When I came back, the WBC was already starting. Spring training was occurring somewhere, but I never noticed it. I had all I could do trying to figure out how the United States could lose to Canada, and how many runs South Africa would have to avoid scoring in order for the U.S. to move on to the next round, where it would have a chance to lose to Mexico and really tick me off.

But now the Classic is over, and not a moment too soon. It’s actually spring now, and Jeter and Ortiz and A-Rod and Dontrelle and Pujols and all the other stars are finally back in training camp, where George Steinbrenner said they belonged all the time. Less than two weeks remain until opening day. We’ve a lot of catching up to do. Real baseball and the 2006 season is nearly upon us, and we’ve barely had time to take notice.

Normally, taking in spring training is as leisurely a pastime as a stroll on the beach in a Cialis or Viagra ad. You know there’s big excitement at the end of the stroll, but at the beginning, it’s all sunsets and string quartets. The dash for home is somewhere in the future.

You start by noting the first home runs hit by the game’s sluggers. You take a quick look at how the veteran starters are doing, but you don’t pay much attention to the numbers — for the first three or four outings, they’re just working on their command, and the numbers don’t really count.

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If your team was awful last year, you may keep track of exhibition wins in the vain hope that a good record is a harbinger of sunnier days to come. But on the whole, wins and losses don’t really matter. You’re looking for the hitters to make contact and the pitchers to throw strikes.

We’ve missed all of that. Three weeks ago, a pitcher with a sore back or shoulder wasn’t a big deal. Now, it is. Three weeks ago, a three-hole hitter who couldn’t hit a beach ball off a batting tee wasn’t anything to be concerned about — his stroke would come around. Now, the same situation is cause for moderate concern bordering on incipient angst.

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It’s a two-week dash now, one fortnight to catch up on the Yankees’ pitching woes — I’m not saying that from actual knowledge, just from the certainty that the Yankees always have pitching woes — the Red Sox’s lineup without Johnny Damon, the reborn Dodgers, the condition of Mark Prior’s shoulder, and all the news we’ve missed while Bud Selig’s international showcase was going on.

The players are barely back in camp and all sorts of things are happening. Alfonso Soriano, who may turn out to be a bigger knucklehead than Terrell Owens, if such a thing is possible, has refused to take the field in Nationals’ camp. If this were a normal year, we’d have had three or four weeks of entertainment following that story. Now, we’ve got to get it in virtually overnight.

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The Red Sox traded Bronson Arroyo. David Wells is feuding with his manager, Terry Francona. Barry Bonds must be up to something. Carl Everett is ripping his old team, the Chicago White Sox. Jim Leyland has been managing the Tigers for more than a month, and I don’t know anything about it.

So many story lines. So little time to catch up on them all.

The task isn’t easy. We catch up with spring training just as March Madness is filling the airwaves and the sports pages. In other years, the NCAA Basketball Tournament is a diversion after a month of spring training. This year, it’s a distraction. It may be a pleasant distraction, depending on how our brackets are holding up in the office pool, but it still take our attention away from where it should be.

And that’s on baseball. Say what you will about football being more popular with the American public, to a true American sports fan, there’s still something magical about spring and exhibition games and the anticipation of Opening Day. We’re getting into it a bit late, but at least our attention is back where it belongs — in camp with our players, our teams, and a spring filled with hope for a season that’s full of possibility.

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