"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

Ahhh, I feel warmer and healthier already.

It's amazing what one 12 minutes trip to Travelocity.com can do.

March 10 through March 15, I'm Spring Training bound.

But...

Not Tampa-bound.

For the past 6 years, I've gone to the Yankees preseason at Legends Field, sometimes during actual games, sometimes during February warmups. I've seen the non-roster invitees, the legends, the old guard, the meaningless games in 80 degree weather. I've waited outside the fences with raucous toddlers all clamoring to get their baseballs signed. I even sat next to the Boss himself once.

This year, I'll be exploring the world of Mets, Cards, and Sux Spring Training down in West Palm beach.

NO, I haven't changed sides. My parents did. Sort of. They changed sides from the North to the South, and moved to West Palm beach. And while there are very few things in life that throw the trump card on the Yanks, family is one of them.

I'm going to think of it as my own scouting-out-of-the-talent trip. And who knows, I'll be there for a week...I may very well decide to hop in the car and take the 4 hour trip east to Steinbrenner Drive...

(As an aside, my boss at my first advertising job, who liked baseball about as much as I like the guy in the Union Square subway station who bangs on buckets with sticks and sells CDs of this, used to call Spring Training, "baseball camp." Which I loved, because whenever I asked for time off to go to Florida, he would be all, "ooh, for baseball camp??!" and I got a kick out of everyone thinking I was going down to Tampa to work on my crow hop and pick offs.)