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It’s a special time of year when the snow leaves us (he says somewhat ironically given the forecast for snow as you read this) and the grass shows through. It means baseball.

High school teams have started practice, college teams have headed south for their first games and the Minnesota Twins are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs.

Or so I assume, but honestly I will never know because I’m not paying for a streaming service to watch my own state’s Major League Baseball team.

Moving on.

As I’ve no doubt mentioned before, my family has a rich history in baseball and I remember with fondness those first days of spring, bright with optimism and fresh out of the gym which has a very unbaseball feel in the best of times.

Fielding ground balls off of a gym floor is akin to standing in front of a firing squad and missing high and tight with a pitch has a good chance of pinging off the catcher’s head after it ricochets off of the solid cement walls.

Even when the wind was blowing crisply and the rain was more akin to daggers of ice, there was always something special about running out to your position for the first time to take infield, or to feel the bat vibrate like an angry viper because aluminum bats and cold don’t make a lot of sense.

Those early days of practice and even a few games in that cold were validating in their own weird way because you knew sunnier days were ahead and the game was only going to get better.

Aside from the family tradition of playing baseball, the game was always an escape for me because it was a sport where size didn’t necessarily matter. One could easily say that having a big heart and big character was enough, but I can confidently say from my time as a tackling dummy in football that really I was just a dummy trying to play football.

No amount of weights lifted or conditioning gained was going to help my diminutive form gain the mass necessary to avoid death while playing the game.

Likewise, I could have easily been named “The Gunslinger” for my basketball prowess. Not because I was this sharpshooter racking up three-pointers and five-foot runners at will. Rather it was because every shot had to come from the hip, helping those on other teams pad their blocking stats. I’m a team player that way.

Track required running, which wasn’t real high on my list of enjoying things to do over and over again and a strong breeze would adequately stifle any jumping attempt.

But baseball. Baseball was a sport that didn’t demand a certain body size to play. Granted throwing from third base and shortstop was little harder than from second base, but the distances weren’t insurmountable. I just had to be a little quicker than most.

Mostly my time was spent anchoring second base with a small amount of time at shortstop and third base and even a shorter time on the mound where I was oddly effective in my senior year of high school and into the following summer of Legion baseball.

I wasn’t mowing down the opposition with blazing fastballs and drop-off-the-table curve balls, but my change-up was stellar, particularly so because it was really indecipherable from my fastball. Also because my coach at the time recognized the value of throwing first a kid with some kind of arm strength and then followed-up with me and my inability to break glass.

I pretty much defined that analogy.

Sadly, that philosophy didn’t carry over into amateur baseball. During a particularly rough afternoon at Lake Wilson’s storied ballpark, a buddy of mine, Dan, who was managing the Lake Wilson Bison at the time, was running out of pitching options. I know because my turn came about.

In one of the more entertaining mound visits of all time he asked if I could give it a go. After I was done laughing obscenely hard I agreed saying something to the effect of how much worse it could get?

Sometimes in life a person just needs to keep their mouth shut, because what happened next I’m not sure any other pitcher can claim throughout the annuals of amateur baseball in the state of Minnesota.

I gave up a grand slam.

No, that’s not it. Just let me finish. Four batters later I promptly gave up my second grand slam — all in one inning.

The first time I watched the ball clear the fence I thought, “well that’s unfortunate.” The second time just included more laughter, though the impact of the moment was kind of something to hang a hat on.

I had just given up two grand slams in one inning. Who else can say that? No really, who else can say that because I would kind of like to be known for at least this one contribution to the history of Minnesota baseball.