Mike Celizic

When NFL training camps open with a week yet to go in July, my internal calendar screams in protest and depression sets it.

It’s got nothing to do with football — I love the game — and everything to do with signals. Football means autumn and autumn means cold weather in many places, and no more summer. And that’s why I hate having my enjoyment of summer shattered by the news that our football heroes are reporting for two-a-day outdoor saunas. It’s a harbinger of chapped lips.

It stands to reason, then, that the news I am hearing this week makes my internal calendar does the happy dance. They are just three words: pitchers and catchers.

I can think of a few words that could make me happier. “Wanna drive my Bugatti Veyron?” are some. “You’ve won the lottery,” are some others. “The Senate has disbanded,” might also raise a smile.

I’m never going to hear any of those phrases. But every February I’ll hear the clarion call of spring: pitchers and catchers.

They begin reporting Thursday to the 30 major league camps in Florida and Arizona. A week later, the rest of the players report. Not long after, spring training games begin.

Forget whether the fat rodent in Punxsutawney sees its shadow or not. The only guarantee that spring is around the corner is the news that baseball players are in uniform and throwing a ball around.

The opening of spring training warms the heart because it’s a certain reminder that baseball season is on the way along with green grass, daffodils and crocuses and sunshine.

I suppose that’s another reason why we associate spring training with hope. When I was a kid, it was especially powerful. News that my heroes were reporting to camp prompted me to break out my glove and make sure it was well oiled. I read the newspapers and believed the local sportswriters when they said that this could be the year my Cleveland Indians won a pennant.

You have to forgive me for believing such nonsense. I was just a kid. How was I to know that in those gentler days, baseball writers trained on gin and tonic and had no particular desire to let the truth get in the way of a good story?

I knew so little in those days, I checked the paper every day to see who won. I actually believed that teams that won a lot of games in spring training would win a lot during the regular season. Many where the years the Tribe won so many games in March, I was convinced they were on their way to the World Series. By mid-May, they’d be 10 games out.

I finally gave up on keeping track of spring wins and losses. Eventually, I also learned not to believe the writers when they said that the latest phenom to chew up the Cactus League was going to be the next Rocky Colavito, because he wasn’t even going to be the next Joe Charboneau.

Interactive AP Get maps, info on every spring training site: Arizona  |  Florida

It was miserable being an Indians fan in those days. In New York, Yankees fans were anticipating the next Joe DiMaggio. In Boston, they were waiting for the next Ted Williams. In St. Louis, it was Stan Musial.

The Indians did me a favor by teaching me what’s important about spring training. And it’s not who wins the games and kids who won’t pan out and veterans who barely play at all because they don’t need to.

I didn’t need any of those things to have the one thing that makes pitchers and catchers so magical: hope.

You don’t need breathless reports about promising kids to have hope. Just knowing that somewhere mitts are popping and athletes are stretching won’t make a single snowflake melt, but it will make it 20 degrees warmer where it counts the most — in your heart.

I’ll leave it to others to get their false hopes up. I don’t need them. It’s enough to know that people are playing baseball and if they are, spring can’t be far behind.

They say that it’s the tilt of the earth’s axis that makes spring come, but they’re wrong. It’s pitchers and catchers.

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