All over the U.S., it’s starting. The grounds are prepped, the mounds are tamped, bases set, and the clicking sound of thousands of cleat-clad men and boys can be heard as they walk across the pavement and down into the dugout.

The pros report next week for Spring Training. Little Leaguers will soon get a phone call from this year’s managers, letting them to which team they’re assigned. High School boys in my town got good news or bad news this afternoon, as final cuts were announced, leaving some jubilant and others in tears. And across town from the high school, the home opener for the Yavapai College Roughriders took place yesterday.

This year my son is a Roughrider (don’t you love that team name?!). While watching his second and third home games of this pre-season period today, I learned that the little league field just north of the Yavapai College ball park is scheduled for conversion as the future home of the new Roughrider softball program, beginning in 2008.

I gazed over at that field remembering … all of my sons played on that field at one time or another when they were little guys, and that’s where I began my side gig as “team mom.” That field is part of a pair of diamonds used for years for little league baseball and adult rec softball, and its the location of little league opening ceremonies, which is quite a wonderful affair here in our town.

Those two fields were where you were likeliest to spot Bill Vallely, on of our areas biggest contributors to and supporters of little league. He was still managing teams when my oldest son started playing ball, but he was fixture in the stands by the time my youngest was out there at short and on the mound. Sadly, Bill passed away a few years ago. Today those fields are known as “Bill Vallely/Roughrider Sports Complex.”

Along with every other baseball fan in the area, I think about Bill a lot this time of year. He seemed to know every little leaguer’s name and followed their growth and maturity with great delight. He was a crusty guy who did not suffer fools, and who called it like he saw it, but he never failed to greet me with, “How’s the gal with the prettiest eyes in Raintree County?” I know he had a thousand such personalized greetings saved up for various folks, but MINE, referencing Elizabeth Taylor, made me both blush and beam.

I missed my son’s first home run with the wood bat, knocked out yesterday when I was laid up with the crud. But hearing about it, I could hear the crack, and remembered the first one he hit out at a tournament in Tempe, his first year on varsity, just three Februarys ago. Bill would have loved seeing that, as would my dad and my grandpa, neither of whom ever got to see these boys of mine play ball.

My personal love affair with baseball began fifty years ago when my grandpa began taking me to see minor league ball in Iowa, and the seat I pick out as an adult is based on his guidance those many years ago. Just the two of us, right there behind home.

Today, sitting in the usual spot, among parents, scouts and recruiting coaches, fighting off this “crud” and the fever that comes with it under a breezy partly blue/partly cloudy sky, I smiled, drank my coffee and gave thanks for the beginning of another year of baseball, even if February does feel a little early to be starting!