Baseball is back. It’s such a concise statement doubling as a lid holding in a jar’s worth of goodness. When said, it really feels like a breath of fresh air.
Inhale-exhale. Ah, April baseball, when anything and everything is possible. Technically, the Major League Baseball regular season started last week when most of us were sleeping. The Oakland A’s split a two-game set with the Seattle Mariners in Tokyo. Those games started at 3 a.m. our time. I’m a fan, however that was too early for me. Did any of you watch?
Wednesday night’s St. Louis Cardinals at Miami Marlins (note the name change) matchup served as the ESPN version of Opening Night. The Giants Opening Day is today in Arizona at 4:10 p.m. The home opener is next Friday. The A’s have their home opener tonight against the Mariners at 7:10 p.m.
It’s now time to begin a seven-month stretch of trade talks, pennant chases, the inevitable “how-did-we get-this-bad?” chatter – or if you’re lucky, “how did we get this good?” – and why don’t they just get rid of Barry Zito?
Pop the lid on the jar and it’s funny what emotions are conjured from watching Opening Day ceremonies and what smells float through the nostrils. Aside from fresh-baked cookies, there isn’t a much better scent than a just-manicured baseball field – the wet dirt and mowed grass. It’s natural, like a whiff of hustle and hard work.
In a public speaking class, oh, let’s say a more than five fewer than 10 years ago at De Anza Community College, I gave two speeches about baseball. The first was an instructional speech on how to properly field a ground ball.
Side note: It had been about a year since I played my final game – a heartbreaking 6-4 loss to Santa Cruz High School in the quarterfinals of the Division II Central Coast Section playoffs. I was a second baseman for Willow Glen. We were ranked No. 6 in the section by the San Jose Mercury News – which felt like a big deal back then – and were the No. 4 seed in the bracket. I went 1 for 2 with a walk in that game. I remember almost everything from that Saturday at Washington Park in Santa Clara. Perfect weather. Huge crowds. My name announced over the public address system. The National Anthem – I could hardly stand still. I remember watching a 2-0 fastball get turned into a two-run home run over the left-center field fence by that guy to break a 4-4 tie in the fifth. And I will never forget the sinking feeling of watching my teammates go down in order in the top of the seventh inning. Agony.
I decided to not play baseball at the next level. Yes, I regret that at times, but realize that that decision was part of my road to today. And in that sense, it was the right choice.
But I digress.
So there I was in front of the class. I hated that feeling. I balked my introductory sentence – mark it down in the book E-speaker. I recovered, because this was the one topic that I was passionate about, and got into a flow. Sure, I had pictures on the overhead projector, but I really got into it, demonstrating the proper fielding position, glove to free hand transfer and so forth.
The next week my speech was angled at convincing the class to go check out a live baseball game. I suggested the San Jose Giants, where fans are close to the action and players are working their butts off to be noticed. To cap it off, I showed a clip from the movie “Field of Dreams.”
Short synopsis of the film: A farmer in Iowa, Ray, and his family are struggling to make ends meet. He hears a voice telling him to build a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield. Storylines develop throughout, though it all comes back to the power of baseball. There is a scene toward the end of the movie where James Earl Jones’ character, Terence Mann, delivers a gripping monologue.
“Ray, people will come Ray… And they’ll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again…”
Gives me chills every time.
Baseball has, more than any other sport, a unique power to remind us of good. Toss out the steroids era and forget about over-zealous fans using team affiliation to raise havoc. Important issues, yes, but such atrocities will never fully infect the core purity of the sport.
I’d bet nine out of 10 reading this have flashbacks from time to time of their Little League days, a neighborhood Wiffle Ball game or that one outing with mom, dad, sister or brother. Baseball brings people together, keeps people together.
Amid a busy schedule, so soothing is a Saturday afternoon at the ballpark, listening to the sounds, feeling the energy, smelling those smells. And for three-plus hours nothing else matters.
Soak up this first week of the season. Maybe I will see you in October.
