Baseball, Is That You Again?

Two old codgers and a baseball bat

For the first time since I started publishing this blog 12 years ago, Baseball Opening Day came and went without so much as a wink or a nod. 

I wouldn't say that my passion for the game I love has dried up, hardly. It's just that A. Bartlett Giamatti's description of it as a game "designed to break your heart" has become all too real, especially for my son.

The funny thing is that unlike most of the kids he played baseball with over the years of Little League, Travel Ball, and High School Baseball, my son, in college now, is still directly involved with the game.

That's a little bit of a mixed blessing because while he'll always be able to say he was on a college baseball team, he may not get a chance to play. 

But he's still at it and for that I can't admire him more. I would have given up years ago. So this is dedicated to him and to all the kids out there, young and old, still living the dream. 

Oh by the way, who are the "two codgers" pictured above, still living the dream in what appears to be them long past their prime? Well if there were a Mount Rushmore of baseball players, these two would have been finalists on just about anybody's list, Ty Cobb, on the left and Honus Wagner on the right, both members of the "original class" of  Baseball Hall of Fame inductees. In the voting, Ty Cobb came in first of all players nominated and Wagner came in second, tied with Babe Ruth.

Here's a photo of the two in their playing days when they faced each other (for I believe the only time) in the 1909 World Series. The two most dominant players of their era, Cobb played for the American League Detroit Tigers and Wagner for the National League Pirates.

In case you're interested in a World Series that took place 102 years ago, and for God's sake why wouldn't you be(?), the Pirates won the 1909 championship four games to three. 

That's the beauty of baseball, it's a game that lives equally in the present, in the future, and in the past. 

Play ball!