Can you smell it? Despite the near-freezing temperatures, driving rain and dark skies, it's March. Conference basketball tournaments are just around the corner, golf tournaments I actually care about are picking up in frequency and the Giants are getting lit up in Spring Training. It's beautiful. When I was a kid, I used to start getting excited for Christmas earlier and earlier each year often getting a rush of giddyness in late August. Now?  I get giddy for late March, the unequivocal greatest time of the year in sports.

This year I think I started anticipating our annual March Madness beach trip in mid-October, well before college basketball season even started. I was watching ESPN today and someone said that Selection Sunday is two weeks from today and I may or may not have let out an unintentional squeal.

March, as we all learn in elementary school, comes in like a lion and out like a lamb. In the world of sports it's the other way around. My sports highlights today are as follows:
1. Watching exactly three shots from the Accenture Match Play golf tournament in which the guy I'd heard of beat the other guy whose name I can't remember (actually I think it was the other way around).
2. Watching 10 minutes from the Ducks' basketball game (you know it has been a rough year when the undoubted highlight of the season involves an upset victory on your home court to knock the Beavers out of contention for the NIT.)
3. Checking the box score from the Giants' Spring Training game to see how Travis Ishikawa did. (1-for-3).

But on March 31? I will be bemoaning how College of Charleston destroyed my bracket, figuring out which Giants onesie Elliott is going to wear on Opening Day, formulating fantasy baseball trades as I somehow can't resist taking Morgan Ensberg again and getting just a tiny bit emotional while Jim Nantz narrates the obligatory commercials for The Masters. We're almost there.



In a few years I'm going to be routinely knocking stuff like this
off of the refrigerator every time I open it, aren't I?