Spring is in the air.

Can you smell it?

No, no, I don't mean anything about Poe Ditch, or even the melting snow ... spring is in the air.

Baseball.

Spring training.

It's here. Today, Friday, February 19: in Florida and Arizona, pitchers and catchers are reporting to major league training facilities, awaiting the traditional opening day in Cincinnati, which now is just 45 days away.

And all is well with the world.

Right now, at the moment you are reading this, Jack Morris might be humming the season's first wicked slider into the mitt of a crouching Matt Nokes, and it won't be long before the midwest's official voice of summer, Ernie Harwell, takes to the airwaves, proclaiming across WJR ("The Great Voice of The Great Lakes"), "Matthew swings, and there's a long one! That one is long gone ..."

There's nothing quite like a new baseball season to wonderfully skew our priorities. Last July, when Ollie North was grabbing national headlines, the burning question in the mind of true baseball fans had nothing to do with Irangate, but was more along the lines of "Did Molitor get another hit today?"

And now, with midterms approaching and presidential primaries making world headlines, equally important questions are beginning to hum in the mind of the baseball nut.

Can Wade Boggs hit .400 this year?

Who will the Reds finish second to this summer?

Can the Indians find any pitching? Is the Tribe Ohio's second-best professional club, or would they have problems in a seven-game series with the Toledo Mud Hens or Columbus Clippers?

Is there another Mark McGwire out there somwhere, ready to take the world by storm with his youthful enthusiasm and athletic prowess?

There's just something so artistically perfect about Abner Doubleday's brainchild that inspires a person to forget about the problems of the "real world."

Forget about the Ollie North for a minute and appreciate the aesthetic beauty of Trammell-to-Whitaker-to-Evans.

Racism can't seem to rear it's ugly head when Dwight Gooden leaps into Gary Carter's arms after shutting out the Cardinals.

It's tough to be pessimistic about anything when you watch an enthusiastic group like the Pittsburgh Pirates, with an average age younger than that of some high school teams, string together eight wins in a row, laughing and joking all the way.

Appreciate the humanness of the one-to-one battle that takes place when Roger Clemens faces Don Mattingly, or Bowling Green's own Orel Hershiser matches wits with Eric Davis.

These confrontations may have little to do with world hunger or world peace, and will soon be forgotten in the scope of history. yet, occasionally, everyone needs to forget their problems, and focus on something inherently unimportant, yet intrinsically satisfying.

Baseball. Happy spring.