Happy weekend and Happy Groundhog’s Day, everyone! Nothing major to report today, other than the fact that I’m excited as hell the first day pitchers and catchers can start reporting to camp is now only 10 days away. The winters are always long without baseball in them, and even though the Hot Stove does a good job of keeping us fanatics occupied, there is no subsitute for seeing players take the field and being able to smell freshly cut grass and the crack of a bat. However, I feel like this winter has been much longer than normal is.

I’ve always been a big fan of quotes and meaningful sayings. When it comes to wating for baseball to make it’s triumphant return, there are two quotes I usually go to so I can express exactly how I’m feeling. One is by the late, great Rogers Hornsby:

“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

My other go-to is a small newspaper cartoon that my mother cut out of our local newspaper in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York and gave to me when I made a journey home one weekend. It’s a picture of two people talking, with one sentence that says it all:

“Just when I begin to think life has no meaning anymore…baseball starts again.”

Needless to say, I’m real excited to see 2013 kick off and start making some trips to ballparks! I’ve always maintained there is nothing more American than sitting at a ballpark on a sunny, summer day, watching a ballgame with a beer in your hand. I can’t wait to feel the sun beat down on my back in my summer home. Don’t you feel the same? Like I said a while ago on the site, it truly is hard not to be romantic about baseball. My love affair with the game has been going on for quite some time, and it gets stronger with each passing day. Thankfully, my fiance doesn’t get jealous.

Thanks for reading! To Follow Matt’s posts at On The Way Home and Rising Apple, you can follow him on Twitter: @mmusico8. If you’d like to join On The Way Home as a staff writer, you can contact Matt at matt.musico8@gmail.com.