A baseball season offers its own method of timekeeping. It’s built to match the contours of the calendar, and to use its language, too. That starts with spring training, a time of rebirth; on to the boys of summer, tied to the season as much as they are to the sport; and at last to October, an entire month of drama. Then, in baseball as in nature, everything turns dark.
The technical terms—“preseason,” “postseason,” “offseason”—still work, just as they do for any other sport. But baseball does not have as much use for them. Baseball’s seasons are the seasons.