_ My father always cites "The Southpaw" as one of his favorite books, so when I happened to see it in the library the other day, I just plucked it off the shelf. It’s a book about baseball, but also a book about a young man learning just how big and complicated the world is. You may know the movie “Bang the Drum Slowly,” which is an offshoot of this series of novels.

Just today I noticed an uptick of people on Facebook making references to spring training; somebody noting that it’s 48 days until pitchers and catchers, another someone wondering if we could just shoot straight from New Year’s Eve to Spring Training. The winter hasn’t even really begun yet, not a flake yet in New York, and people are already getting cagey. Long ways to go still, and it’ll get worse before it gets better.

_Here I sit amid the plastic ties and shredded paper, trying to collect holiday thoughts for a cohesive narrative. The women of the house are all otherwise engaged — one asleep, one building an alternate life on Sims, one syncing and two dancing on the Wii. The place smells of pine needles and coffee, sausages and bacon and cinnamon buns. I'm weighing the merits of the Knicks opener at noon and remembering that I once saw Jordan and Ewing go head-to-head at the Garden on Christmas Day; must have been '85 or '86 or thereabouts — Jordan, I think, dropped 50 on the Knicks, but Ewing won it in overtime. Might have been one of the greatest games I ever saw in person.