It’s here! Pitchers and catchers reporting day for the Chicago Cubs, and although many of those dudes have already been in Mesa, Arizona, many have not (and also, today kinda gets things all official).
It’s been a long, strange offseason in the baseball world, and for many players and teams, the offseason isn’t over. For the Cubs, though, with the team fully-constructed, we can feel good that today marks the end of the “offseason” and the start of “Spring Training.”
For reasons that, in hindsight, are now obvious to me, I am way more jacked for this season than I was for the 2017 season. The afterglow of the World Series win burned too brightly for me to feel appropriately excited about watching the Cubs “try to do it again.” I was still kinda full from that historic World Series cake. This year, though? I think the Cubs are going to have another great team, I think they can win the NL Central again, and I think anything can happen from there. And I’m really excited to see it play out.
Not just the results – I’m so excited to follow a host of the players as they continue to develop, or bounce back, or begin their time here with the Cubs. If I started naming names, I’d probably hit 20 guys that I thought, “Oh, but yeah, I’m *really* excited to see how he looks.”
And that all begins today, with the start of Spring Training.
Chicago Cubs pitchers and catchers: REPORT!