Meteorologists define winter as the time span from December 21 to March 20th.

To baseball fans, winter is that flat, joyless time that kicks in sometime in October, and lasts clear up until around Valentines Day.  Depending on how your team did, symptoms can be resignation, disgust, determination; on rare occasions it’s a glow that slowly fades. The only known remedy is the green grass and blue skies of Spring Training.

Last year Mel Ahrens started, and ran the ActiveRain Baseball Junkies League, I joined, and it was THE BEST. Free, all we needed was a Yahoo account, so what’s not to love?? Back from last year are Mel, Jeffrey DiMurio, Craig Rutman,  Jim Patton , and myself. This year we are joined by two more GIRLS of summer: Tracy, CA Realtor extraordinaire Susan Goulding, and AR’s own sweetheart Kerrie Greenhalgh.

Hailing from the wild north is former baseball prodigy and Minnesota Realtor Bill Feela, and from the even wilder northeast-you know him, you love him, Phil Faranda. Rounding out our group is the skipper of the mysterious Brewster 9…that is my husband Doug…who is still trying to convince his wife (that’d be me-Commissioner, and OHYES, last years’ winner)-on the error of her ways in evaluating stats. HA!

At the start of the season, the league resembled a soccer game with five-year olds: lots of activity, but no clear trajectory. But the ensuing weeks have got everyone settled down, and we have ourselves A RACE!

Now-it’s a long season, and anything can happen. A slump-or breakthrough? A rainy weekend? A couple of Can Not Trade players on DL? It can happen to any of us-but one quarter into the season, here is where things stand:

ONE POINT-which scoring-wise is like one third of a stolen base, or being able to correctly spell the last name of the Red Sox catcher-is all that separate the top three teams: Doug, myself, and Jim.

TEN POINTS-which could be all your pitchers having a good outing, a couple of home runs, and a few rain-outs-or a bad fajita- for the other guys-is what separate the next four teams: Kerrie, Mel, Bill and Jeff.

SEVEN POINTS-what you’d score if say two guys broke out of a slump-or if one of the other managers were too busy SELLING HOUSES to update their pitcher rotation-is what separate the rest of the teams: Craig, Susan, and Phil.

Now, it’s a long season, and you can’t rule any of the players out. For example, experience has taught me that Jim can trade his way out of a jam in a heartbeat. Mel and Bill are both stat masters, and Susan has an awesome pair of bench coaches. The rest of us-Kerrie, Craig, Jeff, Phil, Doug and myself-we’re all from New York, so there you go, no worries about US!

Stay tuned, and hope you’re enjoying the season as much as we are!!