Play Ball!

A new baseball season started today, March 31, 2008. If this means nothing to you, I encourage you to keep reading. Opening day in the Major Leagues, to this boy of nearly 55 years of age, is the ultimate Spring Awakening, official confirmation of deliverance from winter's biting spell. Tomorrow, April 1st, is much more than the day after today; April's coming represents the symbolic transformation of darkness into light, melancholy into cheerfulness, boredom into excitement, desolation into lushness. It is the occasion of my annual rebirth, a regeneration of mind and body, a renewal of hopefulness. It is no accident that April starts with the letter A, signifying the beginning. And she is followed by her sisters May and June, two of our calendar's loveliest creatures. If I were to have triplet girls, I might just name them April, May & June; then again, if I were to have triplet girls at this age, I might just drive my car off a cliff.

Growing up in the early Sixties in the northern New Jersey suburbs, baseball was king, and my team, the Yankees, held the throne. Those were the glory days of Mantle & Maris, Whitey & Yogi, of legendary home run battles, and of win after win after monotonous win. I lived near the golf club where Phil Rizzuto, Yankee broadcaster and former star shortstop, belonged, and word would reach us on the playground that a few of the Yankee stars were playing there on their day off. My buddies and I would hop on our bikes and ride like crazy to a spot where we could see through the fence, hoping to catch a glimpse of our heroes coming down the fairway. I never actually did, but the breathless anticipation was almost good enough.

I had such a love for baseball and the Yankees, instilled by my father, that I would keep score of their games on TV. For the casual or non-baseball fan, baseball scorekeeping is a shorthand method of recording all the details of a game runs, hits, errors, runs batted in, strikeouts, etc. You may have heard a baseball announcer say "For those of you scoring at home", and wondered who were the losers doing that? Well, that's Mr. Loser, if you don't mind. My older sisters, of course, who didn't quite share my passion for the game, looked upon this practice as bizarre. It's different these days, but I never understood why most girls didn't see what I saw in baseball at the highest level beauty, grace, fluidity all those girlie sorts of things. And the field is called a diamond,

• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about The beauty of baseball?
We want to hear your view. Write now!