This is the first day I’ve really felt like spring is coming. The snow is gone in places where there were no drifts. The air has been warmer for three days in a row. The sun is out at dinner time. And ballplayers are starting to pack their bags for next weekend.
It’s about this time when you realize how long is the off season. It may seem like the season is long, especially when your team stinks, but the off season is, well, an eternity. Just think of all of the things one must suffer without baseball – cold, darkness, grayness, barren trees, high heating bills, cabin fever, icy roads, scraping windshields, empty washer fluid, getting out of shape, pre-Oscar movies, the excesses of Christmas, f00t-b@ll season, squeaky basketball shoes, hockey at Wrigley Field, bad free agent signings, worse trades…about the only good thing about the off season is that we don’t have to listen to Joe Morgan or Tim McCarver or Clownboy.
Right now, us baseball fans are sipping through a chewed up straw to get any drip of baseball that may be there at the bottom of the cup we found in the gutter of winter. Playing Bull Durham. Reading The Natural. Watching old games we’ve already seen and already know the outcome. Checking every website that may have any word about our teams. We know it’s coming. It’s like Christmas Eve that lasts two months. Saturday is like the start of Advent. By the time our Holy Opening Day comes around, we’ve been starving for so long that one sip of real baseball makes us drunk.
Won’t be too much longer now.
___
Commentary on baseball and society, baseball and philosophy, baseball and history, and baseball and baseball.
No comments:
Post a Comment