The start of the spring sports season used to make me miserable.

Be it a baseball or lacrosse game, I’d usually show up at an assignment underdressed. Often it was because I’d spent most of the day working in my yard or taking the dog for a walk and I’d figure a windbreaker and a t-shirt or a sweater would provide plenty of warmth. Invariably, I would be shivering by the second inning or quarter, wondering why I was covering a game that can’t even draw flies.

After spending the fall and winter around the more sizable and vocal football and basketball crowds, spring sports are anticlimactic. It’s like going from a U2 show to the town band’s weekly Wednesday night concert.

Well, I’ve finally started to understand that listening to your dentist play John Philip Sousa on his tuba isn’t always a bad thing. Now, I find myself looking forward to the spring sports season more and more, and not just because I know that by the end of it we’ll all be enjoying beach weather.

Spring sports are the perfect way to wind down the school season. The low-key nature of spring athletics make for a nice, easy transition into summer, and, quite frankly, I don’t think I could take another two-and-a-half months of the high school sports scene as it is currently observed in our fair state.

Fall sports are intense on the field and intensely scrutinized off the field. I’m thinking mostly of football, of course. We in the media hype it up with pre-game stories and predictions and post-game highlights. Everybody has their Top 10 polls and each week’s slate of games is heatedly rehashed and debated on Internet message boards. Most of it is done in the correct spirit, so it is usually fun, but sometimes we go over the top, as do the fans. When it comes to high school football, we’re not Texas, certainly, but sometimes, especially when I hear some leather lung lunkhead in the stands berate a kid for poor tackling, I still wonder if we take it a little too seriously and make it seem too important.

The autumn ardor isn’t limited to football, though. There are some serious soccer nuts out there, too. Field hockey also has its rabid followers. I’ve seen soccer and field hockey crowds whip themselves into a frenzy on more than a few occasions. Ship them across the Atlantic and pour a few pints down their throats and they’d fit right in at one of those stadiums with a moat.

The winter sports just seem to ratchet the fervor up another notch. Obviously, part of that is because we’re all cooped up inside for four months. But basketball and hockey have passionate followings all across the state, and there are pockets of Maine where wrestling is just as big a deal as, if not bigger than, hoops and pucks. The electricity in the Augusta Civic Center from the first semifinal of the state wrestling championships to the final buzzer of the Class A state basketball championship games made the hair on the back of my neck stand up for the entire month of February.

You can’t top that for intensity, and you can’t sustain it, either. Certainly not when you’re outside on a cool, breezy Saturday afternoon watching an early-season baseball game, which is what I was doing Saturday.

My first baseball game of the year featured North Yarmouth Academy and Gray-New Gloucester, two teams who probably won’t still be playing when the beach weather arrives. Nevertheless, I and about three dozen other people who showed up in our winter jackets witnessed a very well-pitched, well-fielded (considering both teams have spent less time outdoors this month than Bernie Madoff), and all-around well-played game with an exciting finish, a 4-3 G-NG victory on a walk-off single.

As I was reminded, a baseball crowd is far different than its football and basketball counterparts. Other than an old-timer or two who remembers the days when high school baseball games were considered a big deal and drew throngs of fans, crowds during the regular season are usually limited to the players’ families. It’s different when the arch rival rolls into town or the playoffs start, but during the regular season, you’ll usually get 1/10th of a football or basketball crowd. The same goes for track meets and lacrosse.

This is unfortunate in the sense that it supports my belief that spring sports and the athletes who play them get short-shrift from everyone – fans, media, everybody. It always makes my heart sink a little when a state championship track team picks up the trophy and the reward for its season of hard work is a victory lap in a virtually empty stadium.

But it’s not just apathy. Spring sports in Maine are the victims of ignorance. Many of the best athletes this state has to offer thrive this time of year. Quick, how many high school football players from here have been drafted? How many basketball players? Take the total number from the last 20 years in those two sports and combine them, and you still wouldn’t have a number that matches the baseball players from Maine that have been drafted in the last five years.

To me, the spring sports season used to be like the letdown one feels after attending a big party or other celebration. But I’ve come to terms with it. How can you blame folks who have been waiting so long for good weather for finding other things to do?

So instead, I celebrate the laid-back spring. By this time of year, I’m sick of hearing people scream “Call it both ways!” I’m tired of Top 10 polls. I’ve had enough of Internet pissing contests.

I just want to watch a good game, along with three dozen of my newest friends.