This week is spring break and the newly picked varsity team is currently on a barnstorming trip to Florida, including playing against one of the best teams in that state, which happens to be the team from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Adding insult to injury is that both he and I keep receiving notices on social media from friends who are on that very exciting and emotional trip.
Life goes on and today is opening day for Major League Baseball. The experience hasn't soured my son on the game as he's been looking forward to this day since the last game of the World Series last year. I can't say the same for myself, as not only does this particular day bring a touch of sadness and melancholy to me, but today's cold, gloomy weather doesn't exactly inspire me to write about baseball. It is still March isn't it?
Well tradition is tradition and as I have every MLB opening day since I began writing this blog nine years ago, I feel compelled to write a tribute to what I still believe is the greatest game ever invented.
This year I thought it would be fitting to include not only a tribute to the game, but also to my son and how he brought me to the game as much as I brought him to it. The following came from an introduction I wrote for a website devoted to baseball that I worked on diligently but never saw through to its completion. Perhaps I'll turn it over to my boy who knows as much about today's game as anybody I know. The following is dedicated to him:
I've always been a baseball fan but I truly fell in love with the game in earnest during a ball game at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, while sitting in the stands with my wife who was pregnant with our first child. We knew we were going to have a boy and it dawned on me that beautiful August evening that in a few years, I'd be playing catch with my son. Suddenly the game took on a whole new meaning. No longer was it the casual amusement I took for granted as a spectator and occasional participant. It was now part of my culture, the game of my country and its people, a precious institution I'd be entrusted to pass on to the next generation.
The idea for this website came about ten years later when my son and I found ourselves at that same ballpark. After a ball game we went across 35th Street into the parking lot which happens to be the site of old Comiskey Park, former home of my team, the Chicago White Sox. On the pavement are marble slabs marking the site of the long gone ballpark's home plate and batter's boxes. My boy stepped into what once was the left handed batter's box. Without any prompting from me he said: "Babe Ruth stood on this spot."
I knew at that moment, for all my faults as a parent, at least I did something right.
Ty Cobb, and Joe Jackson also stood on that spot as did Ted Williams. Mickey Mantle, Cool Papa Bell, both switch hitters. worked from that side of the plate part time, while Reggie Jackson and my personal hero, Harold Baines worked there full time. And now my son, himself an aspiring ballplayer stood on that spot.
Some folks criticize baseball for being a game that is obsessed with its past. Perhaps that's true. Our boss was perplexed one day when he walked in on my colleague and me as we were debating the specifics of a ball game that took place 100 years before. But baseball is every bit as much about the future as it is about the past. Every year come April on opening day, the thought on the mind of the typical fan is that this WILL be the year. And not a small number of young (and not so young) American men (and women) put themselves to sleep at night dreaming that one day they will hit the walk off home run or strike out the side in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series. Bringing it full circle, when that happens, the commentators will compare their feat to Bill Mazeroski or Christy Mathewson.
The day my son and I stood before home plate of old Comiskey Park, I couldn't help but think about all the wonderful afternoons and evenings I spent as a young fan in the stands of that beautiful old ballpark on the south side of Chicago, which led me to thinking about the cyclical nature of baseball, a game that transcends time, space, class, gender and age. The game of baseball has no defined beginning, middle, or end. The names might change, but just like the course of a great river, over time, baseball just keeps flowing on.
Then I stopped thinking and my son and I did what came naturally to us, we played catch upon that hallowed ground.
My son's baseball dream while derailed for the moment, is certainly not over. He'll be playing in a summer league or two and possibly another in the fall. He works as a Little League umpire in our local park which should keep him busy this summer. Then there's also the possibility that he'll make the varsity team next year, his senior year. And who knows, maybe he'll play some ball in college and even beyond. But the sad truth is that all baseball dreams have to come to an end sometime, and far more often than not, it's because of circumstance rather than choice.
On the other hand, one's love of baseball doesn't usually end until a person is six feet under the ground, if then. There's always next year and the year after that and with it the hope that springs eternal that this one indeed will be the year.
Best of all for those of us so blessed, waiting around the corner, there's always another game of catch with your son.
On that I positive note I bid you adieu with the two happiest words in the American English lexicon, "play ball!"
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