Sport: Springing for The Check

"It starts over every spring with or without you; maybe that's the trick of it," said the old catcher Paul Richards, who died last May.

At least in spring training, baseball is neither a game of inches nor a business measured in dollars and cents, though things are pretty well calculated. In Mesa, Ariz., where the California Angels do their exercising (and exorcising), home runs are gauged by how many rows deep they soar into an adjacent orange grove. At Tampa, Cincinnati Manager Pete Rose can tell you exactly how hard Pittsburgh's Forbes Field used to be in the old days....