Mar 31, 201109:20 AMPositive Vibes
A blog that explores authentic human connection
Long hall of memories
It’s here again, baseball season, my favorite time of the year, seven months of daily song. It’s not that I’m an avid fan of a particular team, though I do have a certain fondness for the Red Sox and Cardinals. The Yankees and Dodgers always interest me, and, just because it has been so long, I would dearly love to see the Cubs win.
In the end, I don’t really care who ends up in the World Series. I just like baseball. Almost any game is good enough for me. I like the pace and peace of the game. It’s like Paul Simon said, “I always get very calm with baseball.”
The great bards who have addressed baseball speak of its pastoral nature and perfect symmetry, and I suppose there is truth and beauty there for some. For me, the hold of the game is a far simpler thing. Baseball is about memories, memories that will never fade:
• Sitting on the floor with my father, looking at baseball cards and learning to recognize a respectable batting average long before I could add…
• Dad cutting base paths in the back yard with a push-mower…
• Mom playing short while Dad pitched, and how they would fill gunnysacks with sawdust and sow the tops shut for bases…
• Saving up $9.50 for a Rawling’s Trapeze ball glove, a Ken Boyer model…
• How a Louisville Slugger felt in your hands and still does…
• The day our Little League coach took us to Crosley Field in Cincinnati and we ran down the aisle because Roberto Clemente of the Pirates was leaning against a low wall, talking to kids and letting them hold his glove. “Best bad ball hitter in the world,” coach said. “And you know about his arm.” We learned that day…
• The day in high school when our coach got so excited he jumped up off the bench and split his head wide open on the roof of the dugout…
• The way Raymond Parrot could field ground balls. We all thought he would go to the majors. He went to Viet Nam instead…
• Dizzy Dean, Pee Wee Reese and the Saturday Game of The Week…
• Years later, getting to know Pee Wee and sharing a bag of peanuts, salted in the shell…
• A spring afternoon in Lakeland, Florida, Joker Marchant Stadium, sitting at a picnic table with Detroit legend Al Kaline, Al saying he really thought the Tigers had a chance to take it all. They started the year 35-5, and ended the season with 104 wins, sweeping San Diego in the series. All Al didn’t forsee were the riots that swept Detroit and confined us to Tiger Stadium well into the night…
• That night looking out on old Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, Carl Yaztresmski sitting there in the visitor’s dugout saying: “I don’t want to quit, but it’s time. I will miss it. Hell, yes, I will miss it. Baseball’s been my life. It’s hard to imagine not playing.”
• Teaching my sons to stay back on the pitch, and to swing down and through the ball…
I could fill a book with these memories. Perhaps someday I will. For now, I’m just going to watch the games, knowing that every inning will retrieve another memory.
It’s good that baseball is back. I always enjoy the football season and basketball is entertaining, but there is nothing quite like baseball – not for me, not for many others. It’s like George Will once said, “Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.”
He’s right, of course. Some deliver far more than others, and some of us are thankful that they do. I am glad to have that long hall of memories.
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