HAPPY NEW YEAR. I know it’s not January, but for passionate baseball lovers like myself, the new year started last week, when pitchers and catchers reported to spring training.

I’ve never covered a February Major League Baseball practice nor have I ever attended a spring training workout. But it doesn’t take someone who has been to spring training and smelled the freshly cut grass during baseball’s preseason to know what the end of the game’s hiatus means. 

Baseball being back means that the Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates are in first place. It also means that the Royals will be terrible again and that the Pirates will be slightly better after posting a productive enough second-half record to create optimism for the following season.

Baseball being back means that the New York Yankees will trot out baseball’s most star-studded lineup and still won’t win the World Series. It means that Alex Rodriguez, the 2005 American League MVP and arguably the game’s best player, will bash 40-something home runs and drive in 130-something runs. And the fans in New York will still boo him.

The re-emergence of baseball means that the Chicago Cubs will treat their fan base to a 100th straight championship-less season. The difference is that this year, the Cubbies have enough tools in the shed to end the World Series drought. The team added revered manager Lou Pinella to its dugout, 40-40 man Alfonso Soriano in the outfield and 15-game winner Ted Lilly to the starting rotation.

Somehow, though, the much-improved Cubs, as good as they look on paper, will find a way to lose in the playoffs. Who (not the one on first) knows how?

It may not even have anything to do with the team. Maybe they’ll be on cruise-control on their way to a ring-fitting and a fan will interfere with a foul pop-up, changing everything. I know that sounds silly, but crazier things have happened.

The re-emergence of our pastime from its five-month hibernation means that it’s time for Manny Ramirez to dig back into Ludacris’ bag of tricks, continuing to “act a fool.” Ramirez, a career .314 batter who has belted 450 homers in 14 big-league seasons, is as much a headache to Boston’s front office as Terrell Owens is to Dallas’. The only difference between “Manny being Manny” and “Terrell being Terrell” is that Ramirez is still productive enough that his antics are worth putting up with.

Earlier this week, the left fielder, who makes mention of wanting to be traded each offseason, informed the Red Sox that he’d be reporting to camp four days after the league’s mandatory reporting date this spring, due to “personal reasons.”

The problem is that the team found out his personal reason for not being able to report was that he wanted to attend a car show. The news was just another case of “Manny being Manny,” and another way of knowing that the baseball new year has arrived.

For me, baseball coming back means another half-year of two-hour drives to Baltimore, overpaying for hot dogs and getting kicked out of seats I didn’t pay for. Those three activities sum up my summers.

Some kids spend their months away from school at the pool; others plan trips to the beach. I overpay for sub-par food and get chased around a stadium by ushers. Those are a couple of activities that I couldn’t be happier doing.

Grant Paulsen can be reached at The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401, or by fax at 540/373-8455.