'It's That Smell... That Hot Dog Smell...'

"Are you as ready as I am?"

John asked that question at the end of his last entry, and I smiled at it.

For me, the calendar year begins on January 1st, but the new year doesn't officially start until that wonderful day in mid-February, when pitchers and catchers report to spring training. (For the Texas Rangers, that's February 15. Position players report five days later. Your nugget of knowledge for the day.)

It's a testament to my baseball-centric world, but the new season is the real harbringer of change, the sign that it's time to shake off everything that happened in the previous year,
and the signal to start revving your engines with overly anxious predictions that This Will Be Their Year.

For Rangers fans, the off season was a bit off-kilter. The team was out of it from a July stretch of 12 losses in 14 games. Then, a few moves made us raise our eyebrows. Chan Ho Park? Gone to San Diego (and not into the woodchipper I wanted him to fall into in 2004). Kenny Rogers? Check the undercard. John Hart? Relegated to the golf course.

Then, the Jon Daniels-driven wheeling and dealing sessions started. Gone were Chris Young, Alfonso Soriano, Adrian Gonzales and Ricardo Rodriguez, magically transformed into Kevin Millwood, Adam Eaton, Vincente Padilla, Akinori Otsuka, and Brad Wilkerson.

I simply cannot remember a pre-season period where I've felt this good about the Rangers' chances. Yes, I know -- World Series berths are not won in December. Bite me.

The mantra Jon Daniels recited during his press meetings after taking over the reigns was "aggressive and creative." The club has been exactly that in working the off-season bingo games. It's now time to see if the unspoken word in that credo works: "productive."

I love it. God help me, I do love it so.

As some good friends of mine would remind me, "37 days."