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It's an optimistic time of year. Pitchers and catchers are reporting. With spring arrive thoughts of love. It's not spring yet, but some overgrown rodent named Phil but doesn't signal the spring. The real precursor is the engines revving in Daytona Beach, the Birthplace of Speed! Home of the Great American Race!

It's this Sunday!

When I was kid, listening first on the radio and then on TV, I looked forward to Ken Squier's opening words. I recall something like this:

Live from Daytona Beach, Florida, the Birthplace of Speed. Forty-two engineering marvels, piloted by gallant men, decorated in every color of the rainbow, are poised on the starting grid of the Great American Race, the Daytona 500!

Then I grew up and lost my innocence on NASCAR and everything else. Maturity. Bah, humbug!

Now, on the verge of NASCAR's grand opener, I conjure the February winds in my mind, and an imaginary chill runs down my spine, and I'm standing at the back of my car, opening the trunk and hoisting my backpack, and an engine comes to life, and a thousand seagulls rise majestically in alarm. I hear faintly their screeches.

I also imagine that cross between a vibration and a rumble that occurs when a draft emerges from the fourth turn. And the sound, driving through the tunnel, while cars are pounding the pavement above. I think of the press box on race morning, sun scorching me through the window's prism until it is blunted by the intervention of the roof.

Then I think of all the hassles, and sitting here in my living room, watching on high-definition TV, doesn't seem so bad, at which point I start kicking myself for not wanting to be there anymore, and I realize it is as much a consequence of age as it is circumstance.

Maybe I'll enjoy it more because I know what it's like to be there. I haven't lost my imagination.