Nine.

Nine days.

Nine days until the first scrape and crunch of cleats on the sidewalk west and the sidewalk south, connecting the clubhouse to the back fields, a few miles north of Luke Air Force Base.

The chatter, the carioca, the sweet music of slightly asynchronous long toss.

Nine days until about seven days until we grow weary of the vanilla cliches and recycled B-roll and yet another story about Matty's back or Prince's mission or Jurickson's hair, and crave footage of a second team on the field, on one end or the other of pitches being judged by umpires, with the scoreboard turned on.

Nine days until about seven days until another 10 days or so until our eyes start to glaze over at yet another box score weighed down by two dozen players a side, and (even as Pat Cantwell does something else to impress the new big league manager, a story that will earn 10 fewer segments than the 10 on Jurickson's hair) here comes another wave of vanilla cliches from the guys in BB-140C blue, telling us spring training is about two weeks too long, and everyone's ready to leave Arizona to get back to Texas en route to Oakland, and not one of us will disagree.

Nine days until about seven days until another 10 days or so until a few more weeks until we'll cringe at how one of those four against the A's went, with Ben Zobrist probably in the middle of things, wishing we could roll the calendar back a bit and get at least one do-over.

That all seems like a long way off — "Better Call Saul" debuted (awesomely) just three days ago, and I think the first season will end by time Chuck Morgan introduces the Rangers and Astros — but we're only a few "best shape of his life" quotes away from the sounds of fungo on horsehide on leather, of PFP's and Adrian barking at Smiling Elvis, of Jeff Banister's first spring training west of the Gulf.

Nine days.

Let's go.

Nick Pants