Photo by Ryan Armbrust

It's eight in the morning, and it's cold. Sixteen degrees, according to the thermometer in my car. It's clear and still in the early morning hours, and the sun is just starting to color the eastern horizon. Thankfully my camera doesn't care that it's well below freezing.

This is weather more suited to the day before Thanksgiving, to the Nebraska-Colorado game, to buying two Runzas (one for each pocket) to keep your hands and belly warm.

It's not football season, though. It's nearly baseball season, and that's why I'm outside in the cold. I wanted to get out and take a look at the field on this, what could be considered the first day of the 2007 Nebraska baseball season.

By this point, I've left my car and I'm standing at the chain link fence that surrounds Haymarket Park. This is where the Huskers will open their season in just a few weeks. They'll travel to warmer climes for the first ten games, and then begin play at home on March 6th.

I fully expect one of the first two games to be 65 degrees and sunny, and the other to be 20 and snowing. I'm just not sure which one will get the unseasonable weather. Their first two opponents, Nebraska-Kearney and Wayne State, are both in-state schools, so they'll be expecting this.

The field itself is blanketed in snow, with just a patch of dormant brown grass showing through a bald spot in the white cover. Ted Kooser once mused that the golden-brown color of grass in a Nebraska winter is one of six colors, that if squeezed onto a palette, would immediately be recognized by a local as looking like Nebraska in winter. There's just not a lot of green in our lawns, ditches or ballparks between October and March.

Later this afternoon, this year's version of the baseball team will gather for the first spring drills. Fortunately for them, there's a new multi-million dollar state of the art indoor practice facility waiting for them. The batting cages have been moved inside, waiting for the first pings of the year. I hate the ping. If only wooden bats were economical, and Title IX didn't preclude MLB from giving them to college teams...

The coaches have already started their routines, though, by giving the first bland, meaningless quotes of the year. Head coach Mike Anderson had this to say about this year's team, "I would like to think this team will hold it together if we don't play well early, [or] if we play well early. We held it together all last year. We just didn't play well [at the end]."

Reminds me of the scene on the bus from Bull Durham, where Crash is instructing Nuke on the proper clichés to use in baseball. It's rare that someone in baseball actually says what they mean, and when they do, everyone takes notice. There's rarely anything interesting said in January, though.

I'm having trouble deciding whether the beginning of the season is coming soon, or is impossibly far away. The immediacy of the field and the knowledge that there's a team suited up and hitting balls just across campus brings me to believe that there's going to be ball played soon.

On the other hand, a hand that's still stiff from the cold and having trouble typing more than twelve words a minute, it's too damn cold for baseball in the foreseeable future. I've lived here my whole life; I know that spring suddenly appears in Nebraska, but it's always hard to believe it's coming when all you can feel is the cold wind blowing in your face.

At least the sun is shining, and I know there's baseball being played somewhere.