Today in New England we get to enjoy one of the more pointless exercises in journalistic enterprise, as we are breathlessly informed on all the local television stations of the departure for Fort Myers, Florida of the Red Sox equipment truck!

In this annual event, smiling reporters on the six o'clock news, apparently stuck with this assignment because they were late to a meeting, wax poetic outside Fenway about spring being just around the corner; that indisputable fact being proven by, gasp!, a truck leaving Boston for somewhere warm. Whatever reporters draw the short straw and get assigned this story, the feel-good sports equivalent of covering the first baby born in the new year, are extra-lucky this year because they can get big snow banks in the background and maybe a plow or two driving by, thanks to the blizzard that roared through yesterday.

Apparently this event, surely proof (as if you needed any) that there's not enough real news to fill the entire hour, is covered in baseball cities all across the country. From Seattle to Cleveland to Boston, viewers are treated to the same story, covered the same way, every year. Which leads to the obvious question: What do they do in Phoenix or Tampa? Do they air a segment showing the equipment truck moving from one parking spot to another? Maybe show the equipment manager ceremonially unlocking the equipment shed? The poor people in those cities have no idea of the human interest drama they're missing.

Every sports fan knows spring training is just around the corner by mid-February, but apparently those big trucks are just too enticing for TV people to ignore. The day I'll pay attention to that coverage is the day they find Manny Ramirez hiding out in the trailer under six cases of bubblegum, ready to leap out and sprint to Yankee Stadium while the truck is stuck in traffic on the Cross-Bronx Expressway.