Posted By Jeff Fletcher on February 12, 2009 8:00 am

Baseball fans count the days all winter until “pitchers and catchers report for spring training.” It seems like it should be some sort of magical day.

Really, there is no such thing as “reporting day.” I believe there may be a rule somewhere that a player needs to at least call someone on reporting day to let the team know he’s arrived, but in reality they don’t even have to do that. All you really have to do is be on the field at stretch time for the first workout, the next day.

Pitchers and catchers for the A’s and Giants report on Saturday. Here’s what really happens…

Players will start filing into camp up to two weeks before the first workout. In the final week, a few more players show up every day. I’m going to guess that at least 70 percent of the pitchers and catchers are in camp working out before reporting day, and of the others maybe five percent don’t report at all. They just show up the next morning for the workout. So there are perhaps only 25 percent who report on reporting day.

For writers, reporting day means standing around the clubhouse for hours and hours to see who shows up. Often there is one guy who is an obvious reporting day story because he’s a key figure who hasn’t been available to the media over the winter. A couple years ago it was Armando Benitez in the Giants camp. Writers wait around, and hope to get “that guy” to fill a story on the first day. (I’m going to guess Buster Posey will be the guy this year in Giants camp, and probably some combination of Cahill/Anderson/Mazzaro in the A’s camp.) Otherwise it’s just hours of standing around and talking to Jack Taschner or Steve Holm.

At some point during the day, the manager and GM will hold a little pre-spring briefing with the writers in which they’ll get all the same questions they’ve gotten in the weeks leading up to the spring. Someone will ask: “Is there anything special you want to focus on this spring?” The manager will say either “situational hitting” or “baserunning.” Guaranteed.

Of course, all the players will be “in the best shape of my life.” Guys who have jobs locked up will say “I just want to get through the spring healthy” and guys who are fighting for jobs will insist that “I can’t try to do too much or worry about the competition. I just have to focus on myself and let them make the decision.” Someone will show up having lost or gained a lot of weight. Someone will show up with a new pitch he learned over the winter. Someone will be delayed by visa problems.

On Sunday, when you are reading the reporting day stories from Arizona, see how many of these stories are in there.

This will be only the second time in my career that I miss the first days of spring training — the other time was when my son was born — but somehow I feel like I won’t miss it at all.