I am writing this on a cold, cold day in late January. In a few days, Punxsatawney Phil will remind us that there will be six more weeks of winter. Oddly, Phil brings the idea of spring into our minds, even in the negation. We each begin to search for that first sign of spring. For some it is the sound of a bird, the red red robin, or the first brave bud or blossom. For me, the first sign of spring has come in the form of a voice, a voice that I hear at around one in the afternoon on the first Saturday of March, a voice that says, "Hi, everybody. This is Bob Murphy speaking to you from Thomas J. White Stadium in Port St. Lucie, Florida, where the New York Mets will play an exhibition game with the ...". It is a voice that starts my heart racing with new hope and excitement, as a harbinger of spring should do. As most Mets fans know, Bob Murphy was one of the three original broadcasters for the Mets when they began as a team in 1962. Two of them, Murphy and Ralph Kiner, have remained with the team up to now. The third, Lindsay Nelson, eventually followed the Dodgers west and died at too young an age (unlike Walter O'Malley). I didn't take to Murphy at the beginning. I felt that he was an apologist for a bad team. I "got to know him" in the seventies and eighties. By that time, he was working exclusively on radio. I came to realize that he is a basically upbeat and kind man who does have a deep understanding and appreciation of the game. His love of baseball is infectious. Even as he approached 80, his voice conveyed his enthusiasm. Bob Murphy stopped doing the Grapefruit League games a year or two ago when he could no longer manage the stairs up to the booth at Thomas J. White Stadium. Last fall, he officially retired. I will have a new voice to harbinger spring. Murph, I hope that you will have a long and happy retirement. It is well deserved. I will always think of you as my personal voice of spring.