Yesterday the kids next door were out in the snow hitting a whiffle ball. As a long time baseball fan, I like that. The week before the Super Bowl no less. Obviously they have their sports priorities straight.

When I was a kid, my friends and I always managed to get out once in January or February to hit some baseballs. We'd wait for the slightest thaw, just enough warmth in the air for us to dare hold a bat without mittens, then we'd grab our baaseball gloves, which were never really properly put away, and head for the backyard.

We'd bang out a few hits into slushy snowdrifts. Soon we'd lose the ball. It's even harder to spot a baseball in the snow than it is in tall weeds. Or else the ball would get wet and heavy so when you made contact it would send an electric shock through the bat into your reddened, half-numb hands.

Then we'd go inside, and revel in our defiance of winter.

Winter deserves to be defied. There is something unnatural about a season (in the northeast anyway) which won't let kids play baseball. Maybe that's why people move to Florida and Arizona.

I don't hit baseballs in the snow anymore, but I root for Punxsutawney Phil. What is Groundhog Day but an act of defiance? You've got to admire a marmot with the audacity to believe that if it doesn't see its shadow on February second, winter won't last for another six weeks.