It’s Almost Truck Day in New England.

I’ve been in Hawaii for more than 53 years, but I still remember what winter is like for you folks back east. You get up and go to work in the dark, the days are grey, it’s dark again by the time you’re driving home. Sometimes it’s cold; the rest of the time it’s “freeze-ass” cold.
 
I don’t know what date or event marks the end of winter and the arrival of Spring elsewhere in the country, but throughout New England, regardless of what the weather might be like, it’s Truck Day . . . and it’s next Thursday.
 

 Truck Day is also—and even more importantly—the first day of the new baseball season. At 6:00 a.m. next Thursday, a huge 18-wheeler will roll up to a side entrance of Fenway Park and, for the rest of the day, everything the Red Sox will need for Spring Training will be carefully packed and loaded: bats, balls, uniforms, whirlpool tubs, batting cages, medical equipment, personal items belonging to players . . . you name it.
 
By the end of the day, packed and loaded, the truck will roll out of Yawkey Way, thread its way through the narrow streets of Boston’s Back Bay, and emerge onto the Mass Pike. Two days and not quite 1500 miles later, the truck will arrive at the Red Sox facility in Fort Myers, Florida.
 
And 60 or 70 athletes will begin Spring Training: workouts, instruction, drills and exhibition games, all designed to winnow the talent down to 25 superbly talented players. And then it will be the 4th of April and Opening Day with the “Sawx” in Cleveland and then, a week later, the first game of the new season at Fenway Park. And the next thing we know, it will be the 23rd and 24th of July and I’ll be in Fenway Park watching the Red Sox and the Minnesota Twins.
 
And it all starts with Truck Day.