IT’S FEBRUARY, AND ONCE AGAIN, it’s spring training season. I’m in Orlando, Florida, on assignment for MLB.com covering the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, and my attention is monopolized by the sprawling artificiality of the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. That’s when I notice the Sandhill Cranes.
The breeding pair live here amid stadiums, arenas, and multipurpose fields, a reminder that this land used to be swamp. They act at home, dancing around minivans, hammering at their reflections in gift shop windows, and filling the airstrip-size parking lot with courtship calls that drown out even the Boat-tailed Grackles.
One morning, the cranes stride onto a field, go into a bullpen, and stand on the mounds as uniformed players stretch, catch, and run drills around them. On the pitching rubbers, the…