It’s amazing that in the space of a month, we’ve gone from the sure signs of an enduring, Game of Thrones style winter, to the first concrete signs that better, warmer times are surely approaching.

Summer is coming to Westeros, for Spring Training has begun!

Spring Training means it’s time to look toward putting away winter coats and embracing sunscreen! It means checking ticket prices and engaging in friendly wagers about how badly my Yankees will humiliate your team!

Sports are obviously a big deal to me. Fandom is a big deal to me. It means an opportunity to come together, regardless of political slant or religious denomination. It is a simple commonality; these people wear your city’s colors, the uniform, the emblem. They represent you, in a purer manner than politics, and showing your support links you to them and the rest of your city. They may win. They may lose. But as a fan, the joy or misery you share with hundreds, thousands, millions of others, it binds you in a very tribal sort of way.

There are those who will say that if we put the energy into politics as we did into following our sports teams, we wouldn’t be where we are today in our political climate. There may be some merit to that. But if you think about it, what happens in sports is a precursor in many ways to what's going on in politics. A specific example: there would likely not have been a Civil Rights Movement as we know it without Jackie Robinson playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, or Nat Clifton playing for the Knicks a few years later. Integration happened in the sports they played long before it happened in the hotels in which they stayed, the trains on which they rode, the restaurants in which they dined, and even the military in which they served.

The fight for women’s equality in modern times began with Title IX in the NCAA, which made women’s collegiate athletics mainstream. That dovetailed into American women’s professional sports leagues. Believe it or not, those women are spearheading the pay equality cause of today, and regardless how you feel about how much money athletes make, we can all get behind equal pay for equal work and ability. The next great cause that sports can initiate is LGBTQ equality, most recently highlighted by Jason Collins (the first openly gay NBA player), Michael Sam (football) and Brittney Griner (WNBA). And these things are all important, and play out in front of a captive national audience for three to five months at a time. Perhaps religious equality – somehow, still an issue in 20-freaking-17 – will be addressed by Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh superstars in our favorite major sports. The point is, these are major talking points within our society, issues of the day, and professional sports can be -- usually is -- one of the driving forces for positive change.

But, if I'm truly honest, I’m not thinking about any of that so much. I’m looking forward to cold beer, warm weather, nachos, raucous cheering, and watching the Yankees kick ass.

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