It’s still cold and snow is still in the forecast from time to time.

Who cares?

Baseball is back.

Last Saturday, my radio was tuned in to the Pirates’ first Grapefruit League game of the season on the radio. Just hearing a baseball game described on the air, hearing the sound of bat against ball, was music to my ears.

Yes, the Pirates collapsed over the final two months in both of the past two years, their starting rotation is questionable, their offense is still a work in progress ... I get all that.

This isn’t just about the Pirates, anyway.

It’s about baseball.

Baseball at all levels.

High school teams are practicing indoors and will be outside in a manner of weeks. Slippery Rock University is headed south to play a busy schedule.

The Butler BlueSox and Slippery Rock Sliders have put their rosters together. The Prospect League All-Star Game will be at Pullman Park in July.

I even enjoy stopping by and taking in a Little League game while walking my dog at Memorial Park.

Baseball may no longer be considered our national past-time, the running joke being that baseball is past its time. The sport is considered too slow and too “boring” by today’s sports standard.

We like our sports to be quick, fast-paced, athletic and physical today. We want action and plenty of it.

In the eyes of the modern sports fan. baseball doesn’t offer that.

In many instances, kids are migrating toward lacrosse as their spring and summer sport these days. And, indeed, that is an exciting game.

Yet baseball continues to fascinate me. Always has, always will.

Its history presents an endless sea of statistics I can gleefully lose himself in. Arguments over who was better — Ted Williams or Barry Bonds, Nolan Ryan or Sandy Koufax, Stan Musial or Hank Aaron, etc. — can never be solved, but offer hours of entertaining debate.

Then there’s the game within the game, to bunt or not to bunt, how to position a defense, the guessing game between pitcher and hitter, it’s all good.

And I played the game. Most people my age did when they were a kid.

I don’t know if I know anyone who didn’t swing a bat at some point in his life.

I remember playing catch with my dad, sliding drills in Pony League, pulling dandelions out of the grass in right field during Little League, wondering if a ball was ever going to be hit to me.

If it was, I always knew where I was going to throw the ball and why.

My coach always loved that about me.

It didn’t matter that we lost games 56-0, 44-0 and 40-4.

It’s about baseball. It’s been a constant in my life.

No game will ever match it in my mind.

Never.