Opening Day 2026

We pick up where we left off last November after what was in my opinion, one of the greatest baseball postseasons I've ever experienced, perhaps second only to the 2005 season when my favorite team won the World Series for the first and only time in my life.

If you've forgotten about last year's MLB playoffs, you can read about them here.

Or to save you from what was perhaps my longest post ever, (that's not even counting the epilog which had to be added to cover the World Series), you can cut to the chase. This is how I ended the epilog: 

Baseball is a strange game and that's probably why I love it so much.

For me, with nothing personally invested in either team, the chill rains of the end of baseball for the year will be quite tolerable. Watching, listening to and reading about this year's post season was like eating a magnificent meal and being completely satisfied, leaving no room for dessert. Or like reading a novel that you can't put down which at the end leaves you moved and inspired but also drained. These experiences don't come along every day, or even every year. Sometimes they are once in a generation or even once in a lifetime experiences.

Which is why we remember them.

Come to think of it, the 2025 MLB Playoffs may have been even more enjoyable to me as I didn't have much emotional investment in any of the teams last year, excluding the brief appearance of the Chicago Cubs; consequently the games were stress-free and I could tune in for one reason only, pure love of the game.

Here's a link to an article from this weekend's New York Times about a significant change coming to baseball this year, the introduction of reviews of ball and strike calls. This is how the article titled Introducing the Robot Umpire, written by Matthew Cullen begins: 

The foundations of baseball have largely remained the same since Babe Ruth swung a bat. Nine innings make a game. Three strikes and you’re out. And the ultimate authority on all pitches is the home plate umpire.

With all due respect to Mr. Cullen, those foundations he mentions go back farther than Babe Ruth's time, perhaps by sixty or seventy years. But he's absolutely right that baseball has been a game historically averse to change and when change does come, there are some who claim all is lost and vow to never watch another game. That said, they usually come back after a few weeks. 

To some, the introduction of reviews of balls and strikes using the Automated Ball and Strike Challenge System (A.B.S. for short) is a no-brainer. For several years now, many televised broadcasts of major league games have featured graphic superimpositions of the strike zone above home plate, and a spot marking where the ball crosses the plate, giving the viewer clear evidence of whether each pitch was a ball or a strike. *

One might argue that given this technology, the role of umpires calling balls and strikes is superfluous. And yet, home plate umpires will continue to call balls and strikes on top of all their other duties. This year the only change will be that players, namely the pitcher, catcher and batter, will have the opportunity to challenge a call they don't agree with, turning the call over to the A.B.S. Each team will be given two opportunities per game to make an overruled challenge, meaning that because there's a premium on them, games won't be bogged down by frivolous challenges. 

This seems like a reasonable compromise between the folks who want to keep the "human element" in the game, and those who insist that the only thing that matters is getting the call right. 

Personally, I'm in the human element camp as part of the aesthetics and drama of a ballgame is the reaction of and to the umpire calling a pitch. That would all go for naught if baseball goes the route of professional tennis which has for the most part eliminated human line judges in favor of automatic ones. 

For me, bad calls seem to even each other out, you win a few, you lose a few, just like in life. When thinking about issues regarding sports officials, I always think of someone I knew for whom the only possible outcome for his team was this: either they won the game, or the game was stolen from them by the refs. Life was hard enough for the poor guy; I can't imagine what it would have been like for him if he didn't have bad officiating to hang his hat on and be forced to admit that his team actually lost.

But I think there is one driving factor that is going to make the human element dinosaurs like me lose this battle forever. It's another recent change in baseball and other sports in this country, legalized online betting.

For that I turn your attention to this brilliant article in The Atlantic titled not entirely ironically: My year as a degenerate gambler, written by staff writer McKay Coppins. 

In 2018, the Supreme Court overturned a law passed by Congress which restricted most sports betting to the state of Nevada. Before that ruling according to the article:

...professional sports leagues remained determined to keep gambling at a distance. High-profile scandals—the White Sox World Series fix in 1919, the Mafia-instigated point-shaving scheme at Boston College in 1978—had convinced commissioners that betting posed an existential threat to organized sports.

Coppins goes on to quote Paul Tagliabue, the late commissioner of the NFL who testifying before Congress said this: 

Nothing has done more to despoil the games Americans play and watch than widespread gambling on them.

After the 2018 Supreme Court ruling however, the leagues took a 180-degree pivot and made up for lost time as fast as their legs could carry them. 

In his article. McKay Collins uses a wonderful literary metaphor (no, not Shakespeare) to suggest why the highest court of the land in their infinite wisdom, may have not made the right decision. You'll have to read the article to find out why. 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that legalized betting is a boon for the sports business. Much as they'd like to depend on the love of the game folks like my son and me, there just aren't enough of us around to turn much of a profit. Sure, fans will always tune in to their favorite teams' games, but how many folks would spend their valuable free time watching a meaningless late-season game between two teams they have no particular interest in? 

But if they have a wager on that game, well that's another story. 

Which is where the demand to get the calls absolutely right comes in. Back in the good ol' days when sports leagues distanced themselves from gambling, they could go on as they always had, letting human beings imperfect as they are, make the calls, then shrug their shoulders claiming that bad calls are simply a part of the game. But now that the leagues and the sports gambling companies are virtually tied at the hip, ** any bad call, even the ones that have little or no impact on the outcome of a game, will send a red flag to bettors that the games may not be completely on the up and up. 

As McKay Collins points out in his article, betting has been around as long as competitive sports. And as I've pointed out a number of times in this space, betting is the reason that spectator sports such as baseball exist in the first place, If not taken to problematic extremes, sports betting can be a fun social activity and bonding experience, just ask the tens of millions of Americans who at this moment have their own bracket or ten entered in the office NCAA Basketball Tournament pool. 

Baseball is a game that lends itself perfectly to betting, perhaps more than any other with the possible exception of American football. Since a baseball game can be broken down by each pitch, betting lines can be set up for any number of occurrences, most of which have nothing to do with the outcome of the game.   

That makes me think of my greatest moment of clairvoyance at a baseball game. I was sitting in the left field bleachers at Wrigley Field one sunny weekday afternoon when the Cubs' late Hall of Fame second baseman Ryne Sandburg was up to bat. With runners on base and a three ball and no strike count on him, I made the comment to my friends, presumably heard by several other folks within earshot: "Do you think he's going to swing at the next pitch?" 

General baseball logic says that batters shouldn't swing at a 3-0 pitch. But I assumed Sandburg would, given that a pitcher not wanting to walk the batter, will often deliver a nice fat pitch up the middle that a great hitter like Sandburg could take advantage of. Which naturally he did, launching a drive that landed in the seats not far from where we were sitting. I looked like a genius, if only I had put money on that claim. 

I bring it up because that moment is stuck in my memory, unlike all the other times I made similar comments only to have the batter take that 3-0 pitch for ball four. Those memories are long lost within the recesses of my brain. If I had placed bets all those times, I'd be deep in the hole.

Which is precisely why I don't bet on sports, I have far too many other methods to part with my money thank you very much.

Needless to say, I'm perfectly happy enjoying stress-free experiences at the old ballpark which I hope to do at least a few times this season with my kids God willing. And yes, I'll be keeping score.

Which means the only thing I'll have to worry about is a team sending more than nine batters up to the plate in a single inning, thereby messing up my tidy scorecard. 

I can't wait.

Play ball!

* Of course, no system is perfect, but it's safe to say that the A.B.S. is more accurate in calling balls and strikes than umpires. For me the best part is when the automated system proves the umpires right.

** If you don't believe that the sports leagues and the betting companies are tied-at-the-hip, next time you watch a game on TV, note the number of times you'll see an ad for an on-line betting site. 

Opening Day, Yea

Pretty much the one and only tradition on this blog is my annual shoutout to the greatest game never invented* on its most important day of the year, Opening Day.

Pinning down actual Opening Day this year is a little difficult because at this writing, March 27, 2025, Major League Baseball's official Opening Day, one of Chicago's two MLB teams, the one that plays on the North Side of town, is already 0-2, having played a series last week with the World Series Champion LA Dodgers in Japan. So it's a little hard to say the traditional Opening Day aphorism: "all hope springs eternal" to the Cubbies who are already winless, two games under .500.

And saying it to the other Chicago team, the one that plays on the South Side, my favorite team, carries with it not a little touch of irony as last year, The Chicago White Sox posted almost the worst win/loss record in the era of the 162 game Major League season, second by a hair only to the woebegone 1962 New York Mets. 1962 incidentally was the Mets' first year of existence. The White Sox who played their first MLB game in 1901 can't use inexperience as an excuse.

As the Sox have not done much to improve their team in the off-season, (on paper in fact the team is a little weaker than it was at the start of last season),the best thing we Sox fans can say today, at least before the 3pm CDT first pitch this afternoon is: "well at least we're two games ahead of the Cubs. 

Yea team.

To give you an idea of how pathetic last year's season was, in the MLB they say: "Every team wins at least sixty games and loses at least sixty games in a season, it's what they do in the remaining forty-two games that matters." 

Turns out as far as the winning part, the 2024 ChiSox came up nineteen games short of that milestone of futility. 

An ancient sport's adage we Chicagoans all learn while still in our diapers is this: "wait 'till next year."

Well next year is here and hmmmm, we'll see. Can't do any worse than last year can we? 

Never say never.

There are other reasons to be less than enthusiastic about opening day. One is that my son's baseball career as a player is all but over as last year he graduated from college, and from his school's baseball team. He didn't get to play much college ball but he did make the team all four years, and being a member forged several life-long friendships, many great experiences, as well as a deep sense of belonging. I have to say since graduation, he's lost much of the twinkle in his eye. 

Another depressing thing I just found out is that more of the iconic Wrigley Field experience is about to disappear as several of the classic Chicago hundred-year-old three flat residential buildings just beyond the right field bleachers are about to be torn down and replaced by a standard 2020's issue apartment building. As demolition has just begun, Cub fans at their games this season will have the sight of the beautiful buildings' destruction to look forward to, which may actually be less depressing than watching their team.

For their sake I hope I'm wrong. 

It's all fitting because baseball, as the late A. Bartlett Giamatti pointed out in his wonderful essay "The Green Fields of the Mind: "...breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart." 

And how.

Just not today.

Happy Opening Day.

Play ball!

* Much to the contrary of its popular creation myth, the game of baseball evolved over several decades from already existing games rather than being invented as say, basketball was.

Keeping Score

You must be thinking, what could this guy possibly be writing about now? Given the topics of my recent posts, this one must be about keeping score in terms of politics, or war, of the crumbling of society as we know it, or where Casablanca falls on my list of all-time great movies.

But no, look at the date.

Today's Opening Day, the best day of the year, the day all hope springs eternal, and this post is about the true meaning of the term "keeping score". It's also about how baseball is so ingrained into American culture that our language is filled with idiomatic expressions that come directly from the greatest game never invented.

 

The French cultural historian Jacques Barzun famously wrote:

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules, and reality of the game.

I turns out that 55 five years later out of disgust with the game, Barzun took back that comment, but hey this is Opening Day, we'll have to leave that for another day. It would be like trash-talking Jesus on Christmas. 

To prove Barzun's original comment, I'm constantly impressed by my equally French boss's ability to rattle off baseball terms as if she had been a student of the game at the Sorbonne. 

It turns out that she really can't stand baseball and more than likely has no idea that much of her excellent command of American vernacular directly channels "the National Pastime."

So I get a little smile whenever she says things like "let's touch base" or "I'll take a rain check" or that something is "hit or miss."

Here's the most comprehensive list I've found of common baseball expressions that have made their way into everyday American English.

Strangely enough, "keeping score" is not on the list. 

You keep score in other games (perhaps that's why this particular expression didn't make the list), but at least in my experience, no other sport is so compulsively focused on recording the minutest detail of every single moment of every single contest as baseball.

To give you an example, I'll take a random Major League player from the past and a random date from sometime in his career and look up how he did that day during the game. Pulling a name out of a hat I'll pick Nate Colbert (never heard of him), a three-time all-star first baseman and outfielder who had a ten-year career playing in the late sixties and seventies for five different teams. Now let's pick a random date, say June 25, 1973, and see how he did. By the way, baseball terms that have become idiomatic expressions in everyday American English from here on are highlighted in red.

The following is from the estimable source on all things baseball, the website BaseballReference.com:

OK, from the box score, we see that on June 25, 1973 as a member of the San Diego Padres, Nate Colbert went 0 for 4 in four plate appearances with one RBI, I'm guessing by driving in a run on a ground ball, in a 3-2 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. In the field he played first base and recorded ten put outs, (to be expected at that position). 

Let's see if we can do better. 

Just as I suspected, from the play-by-play, batting cleanup, or fourth in the lineup, in the bottom of the first inning off Dodger pitcher Claude Osteen with runners Dave Roberts (not to be confused with the current manager of the Dodgers) at second and Jerry Morales at third, Colbert hit a ground ball to Dodger shortstop Bill Russell who threw Colbert out at first. Morales scored on the play, accounting for Colbert's RBI, while Roberts remained at second. 

In the bottom of the fourth inning with no one on base, Colbert grounded out to third.

In the bottom of the sixth, Colbert grounded out to third again, advancing this time advancing Jerry Moralez to second base.

My son,
stepping up to the plate. 

In the bottom of the eighth with two outs and Roberts on first, Colbert grounded out to Claude Osteen, which ended the inning. 

Colbert unfortunately didn't bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in that game. Had he failed at that of course, either the ballgame's over, or it goes into extra innings.

Had Colbert played a decade later, we could do even better as pitch-by-pitch accounts became standard in official baseball scorekeeping and we would know how many balls and strikes he had in the count before putting the ball into play. If he had played even later, we'd be able to know out what kind of pitches those were such as fastballs,  curveballs,  knuckleballs or screwballs.

Now I'm sure at this point you must be saying, "who gives a shit?"

Well, let me explain.

Um, I can't really explain, other than to say that out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, in one of them, this information will come in handy one day. Like the tie-in to my previous post?

It also goes to illustrate the obsessive nature of baseball which in turn illustrates the nature of the term "keeping score" when it doesn't apply to the game of baseball. 

It's not generally a compliment when someone accuses you of keeping score.

Unless you're doing it in the ballpark that is, which is what I'll be doing this Sunday with the family.

And as is my annual custom on this great day, I close with the two happiest words in the English language:

Play ball!

Opening Day

Breaking with tradition, although not for the first time, this year I let opening day of baseball in Chicago pass without note for two whole days. Perhaps because for the life of me, I can't understand why baseball should played be in March, at least in this part of the country where the temperatures are still hovering around freezing. 

It's still cold outside, but today is the first day of April and I'm ready to think about baseball. 

That said, I've already sat through an entire ballgame this year. One day before MLB opening day, my son's college team came to town to play the team from the University of Chicago. It was a thrilling game with many scoring opportunities, yet scoreless until the top of the seventh inning when one of my son's teammates, the best player on the team, with no one on base, hit an opposite field home run. 

Then the game got really interesting in the bottom of the ninth. With nobody on and the home team down to their last strike, AND everybody ready to leave because it was SO damn cold, their batter managed to poke the ball between our first and second basemen for a single, then stole second on the first pitch to the next batter. He advanced to third on an infield hit and before we knew it, the tying and winning runs were on base. But after a seemingly endless at bat, the next batter popped to second ending the game, our good guys winning 1-0.

Why I'll never be a sports photographer.
This is the pitch before the pitch this batter hit over the right field fence.
Being superstitious, I photographed every subsequent batter on our team but to no avail.
That home run would be our team's only run, but it proved to be enough.
How can anyone not love this game?

My son didn't play, nor has he played all season. In fact, in this his final year of college, he's only had a few at bats these last four years, mostly during scrimmage games or fall ball where the games don't count. 

Yet unlike the majority of kids he played baseball with and against in his life, from tee ball to Little League, from travel ball to Pony League and high school, he can honestly say he was a member of a college baseball team. He even managed to hit a legitimate fence-clearing home run in a scrimmage game last fall, perhaps the single greatest moment of his baseball career. 

That's something he'll be able to tell his children and grandchildren.

Last month my cousin Betty and I were talking about the fickle fate of being a ballplayer and I mentioned to her that at times I feel guilty for setting my boy up for perpetual heartache by not warning him years ago that the chances against life as a professional baseball player are astronomical. My cousin, one of the wisest people I know told me no, that was something he had to discover for himself. Otherwise he'd forever have the question in the back of his mind that maybe he could have made it, if only his father hadn't discouraged him.

That made me feel better, if only for a moment. 

As a senior, he may be hanging up the cleats for good at the end of this season, but I've said that before.

The look on his face when he saw us show up in the near-freezing cold for a game in which he was certain not to play, was priceless. If only I could bottle it.

My son loves baseball more than words can describe. Somehow, I imagine he will continue to be involved in the game in one way or other.

God bless him. 

So, throwing all caution to the wind, I continue to encourage him as best I can.

Play ball Theo!

Opening Day

Sitting at the breakfast table this morning as has been my routine for nearly the past two months, I read an article in the New York Times about the latest goings on in Ukraine and Russia. While reading an account of a Russian citizen insisting his fellow countrymen are justly fighting American-backed Nazis in Ukraine and adding: "wouldn't it be simpler if Moscow just nuked the United States and got it all over with...", a voice came over the radio noting that today is Opening Day of the baseball season. 

Part of me thought, how completely frivolous to think of baseball at a time like this, while the other part of me thought, God how I need to hear that right now. 

On January 15, 1942, barely one month after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote a letter to Kenesaw Mountain Landis, then Commissioner of Baseball. The president responded to Landis's letter of the day before, offering to suspend all baseball operations for the duration of the war. The following are excerpts from Roosevelt's letter to Landis:

I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before.

And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before.

Here is another way of looking at it - if 300 teams use 5,000 or 6,000 players, these players are a definite recreational asset to at least 20,000,000 of the fellow citizens - and that in my judgment is thoroughly worthwhile.

It is said that Roosevelt's "Green Light Letter to Baseball" written at the onset of one of the greatest crises in American history, perhaps more than anything else, solidified the game's status as "Our National Pastime". It could be argued that as the first major victory in the battle over civil rights in the United States, baseball's integration five years later with the signing of Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers, set the stage for the sweeping changes in this country that took place in the subsequent decades. 

An impromptu game of baseball in the States, a rarer and rarer sight these days. New York, 1986.

Perhaps baseball isn't so frivolous after all.

On the flip side, the dearth of U.S. born black players on major league rosters today, does not necessarily signal baseball's going into retrograde as a vehicle for equal rights, but rather its decline in popularity especially among, but not limited to the African American community.

Nonetheless, baseball is still referred to as "our National Pastime", I think more out of nostalgia than anything else. Judging by TV viewership, American football is by far the most popular sport in the United States. Perhaps more telling, while Little League Baseball still rules the roost as far as organized youth sports go in this country, as far as "pickup" games go, the games kids (i.e.: the future) play on their own, baseball doesn't hold a candle to touch football, basketball and even soccer in the parks and playgrounds across America. 

So the burghers of baseball have decided that something must be done to correct that. Some folks object, saying that baseball has not, should not now, nor should ever change. To that I offer another excerpt from Roosevelt's Green Light Letter:

Baseball provides a recreation which does not last over two hours... and which can be got for very little cost. 

HA!!!

The truth is, the cost of taking a family of four to a Major League Baseball game these days could run into the hundreds of dollars, prohibitive for many families including my own. And honestly when's the last time you've seen a two hour, nine inning MLB game? 

In your dreams perhaps. 

Unfortunately MLB doesn't seem too concerned over the ever increasing cost of their product, but they sure are worried about the length of their games.  

There are many reasons why baseball games played today are much longer than the ones played back in the day, but one reason is obvious just by watching an inning or two of a game played in the past. 

For example, this one perhaps one of the greatest games ever played, unless that is, if you're a Yankees fan. 

If you're used to watching baseball today, you might be a little jarred at seeing the rhythm of the 1960 game, namely the amount of time it takes between the time the pitcher receives the ball from the catcher and the next pitch. I'd say the average is roughly ten seconds in this game, fewer if there are no runners on base. 

Today between pitchers rubbing the ball while circling the mound, batters stepping out of the box, pitchers shaking off signs from the catcher, and numerous other delay tactics from both sides trying to throw off the opposition, thirty seconds is not an unusual amount of time for the pitcher to hold on to the ball between pitches. Those ten to twenty extra seconds between pitches add up when you consider that the average total number of pitches in a baseball game is close to 300.

A simple solution for this is a pitch clock. If a pitcher doesn't make a pitch within the allotted time, say 20 seconds, the batter is awarded a ball in the batting count. Likewise if the batter calls time with less than five seconds left on the clock, the pitcher is awarded a strike.

Kind of makes sense doesn't it? On the other hand, baseball is a game famously NOT ruled by the clock. As such, while pitch clocks may not present an existential threat to the game, they do threaten the clockless perfection, the rhythm, the groove, the mojo, the je nai se quoi, and most important, the what-have-you of the game. Worse yet, pitch clocks displease the baseball gods, I know that for a fact, maybe not as a mortal sin but definitely a venial one. 

Besides, there is evidence that pitch clocks don't shorten games that much if at all. 

Nevertheless, expect to see them in a couple years in the majors. 

This year we are about to see the introduction of another brilliant idea, communication devices between catchers and pitchers that will eliminate all those primitive finger signs catchers used to use to call pitches. The real purpose of the technology is to eliminate something that has gone on from time immemorial, the stealing of signs.*

The hope is this system is going to solve once and for all this age-old problem as it's inconceivable that anyone could possibly hack into it right? 

Right.

The other alleged reason for implementing these doohickies is to shorten games by eliminating the need for all the complex coded signs catchers need to flash in order for them not to be readable by the opposition.

We'll see how that all works out. How the baseball gods will react to this is anybody's guess, my feeling is they're probably already laughing their heads off.

What's really sending the gods off the deep end is the National League's decision to implement the designated hitter rule. The DH has been a regular feature in the American League since 1973. 

Next to whether or not Pete Rose should ever be inducted into the Hall of Fame, this is perhaps the most hotly debated topic in baseball. It seemed that the nearly fifty year history of one major league adopting the DH while the other did not, was a reasonable compromise. I have a good friend who gave up being an American League Chicago White Sox fan in 1973  in favor of the National League Chicago Cubs because of his abject hatred of the DH.

Now he's in a quandary over where to find "real baseball", as the DH will be in effect practically everywhere, even in high school ball.

The debate over the DH was illustrated perfectly this morning on the radio as the host suggested to his guest that the designated hitter is frowned upon by many managers who will mourn the loss of the classic conundrum of whether or not to pull a pitcher who is doing well in the crunch time of a game for a pinch hitter, something that he, the host will miss as well. To which the guest, a baseball writer for the Washington Post responded: "perhaps, but the pitchers will appreciate the fact that they will be able to remain where they belong, on the mound." 

To which I, not a fan of the DH myself, would reply: excuse me, but pitchers like everyone else on a baseball team, are baseball players first and foremost. Baseball is not a game of pure specialists like football, and asking a pitcher to hit is not like asking a field goal kicker to play nose tackle. Besides, most big league pitchers played outfield in high school and even college as the kids who were pitching to them back then, more than likely long ago burned their arms out trying to throw curve balls before their arms were developed enough for it. And being outfielders, today's big league pitchers were most likely once the best hitter on their team. 

God, if only these were the worst of our problems. The nice thing about sports is that we can argue endlessly over such trivial matters, yet remain friends at the end of the day. 

Alas, the same can't be said about practically anything else these days. I can't agree to disagree for example, with someone who believes that the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol Building was valid political discourse. And not until hell freezes over if then, will I ever agree to disagree with someone who argues that we need to understand Russia's point of view regarding their invasion and rape, both figurative and literal, of Ukraine. 

But if you like the pitch clock, the catcher-pitcher thingy and heck, even the designated hitter, so be it, as long as we both agree to play ball.

After all, even during a time of war, life goes on.

* It's possible that one of the most famous moments in baseball, NY Giant Bobby Thomson's 1951 ninth inning come-from-behind, three run walk-off home run in a win-the-pennant-or-go-home playoff game off Brooklyn pitcher Ralph Branca, was the result of a sign stolen off Dodger catcher Rube Walker. In those days the Giants were allegedly using an elaborate sign stealing system (which was not illegal at the time), starting with a coach or team member sitting in the Giant clubhouse 600 feet away from home plate in the Giants' Polo Grounds center field clubhouse, using a telescope to read the catcher's signs, then relaying them via an electric switch that set off a buzzer in the phone in the Giants' dugout that the batter could hear, one buzz for fastball, two for an off-speed pitch. Or was it the other way around?

In either case, that home run was among other things dubbed: "The shot heard 'round the world." Indeed it was. The Korean War was going on at the time and U.S. troops who happened to be baseball fans tuned into the game from half way around the world. One particularly poignant story I read was about a letter received by Bobby Thomson in the 1990s. It was written by one of those veterans. Here's an excerpt:

I was in a bunker in the front line with my buddy listening to the radio. It was contrary to orders, but he was a Giants fanatic. He never made it home and I promised him if I ever got back I'd write and tell you about the happiest moment of his life. It's taken me this long to put my feelings into words. On behalf of my buddy, thanks, Bobby.

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!

 

Opening Day

Baseball's back.

Hallelujah.

Now back to regularly scheduled programming.

Play ball!

Hey Hey, Holy Cow

Another opening day in Chicago, today it's the Cubs' turn in their spiffed up 115 year old ballpark that has managed to retain if not its original name, Weeghman Field, the name that it's been known for all but five of those years, Wrigley Field. My favorite Chicago pro baseball team the White Sox on the other side of town, held their home opener last week. You'll excuse me for my lack of opening day enthusiasm this year as my love of the game is tied to my son whose own baseball career if not his enthusiasm for the game has been sputtering in the last two years where he has failed to make the varsity team at school. It was truly a bitter pill to swallow, especially this year, his last in high school.

That said, he still has an outside chance of becoming a walk-on player in college. Over the weekend we met the baseball coach at a prospective school who could not have been nicer or more supportive, quite rare for his peers. But the odds are still against my boy and I can't lie, it breaks my heart. Not that I ever had any real expectation that one day he'd become a big league ballplayer, in fact I never wanted that life for him. Yet it was his dream, still is in fact, and for that I mourn. Perhaps I did him a disservice years ago by not breaking the news of what an improbable dream it was. I thought I'd leave that to the coaches who either sat him on the bench or didn't pick him for their team to begin with.

As I wrote in this space before, every dream of playing big league ball has to come to an end someday and it's only for a very small handful of people that the ending comes by their own choosing. For everyone else, the end comes when you realize that no one wants you to play for them anymore. In fact, the longer it takes for that dream to die, the harder it must be. Personally I wouldn't know as my own baseball dream was merely a fantasy, unlike my boy, who put his into action.

At least he's excited for the beginning of baseball this year. He'll be playing with his buds in a park district league this summer, their last before heading off for college. It will truly be a bitter sweet summer for the both of us as baseball has been the thing that has brought us together more than anything else.

In a Facebook post, a friend posed the following question: "Which baseball team will you be rooting for this summer?" It didn't take any thought on my part to respond: "any team my son plays for."

And it is for him that I end this post as I have for the past ten years with these gleeful, optimistic words:

Play ball!

Another Opening Day

The day I dreaded for oh about four years finally arrived. It was the day my son was told he didn't make his high school's Varsity baseball team. While the news didn't come as a shock, it was painful just the same, as my boy eats, drinks and breathes baseball. He's a good, solid ballplayer who probably could have made the roster of just about any other Chicago public high school varsity team. But he happens to attend a school with an exceptional baseball program and came there in a year as part of  a bumper crop of very talented freshman players. The coach had to pick 25 players out of 50 kids trying out for the team and my boy simply didn't make the cut.

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!"

Put Me In Coach

There are lots of songs intrinsically tied to the game of baseball.

Legend has it that the tradition of playing the Star Spangled Banner at baseball games began on September 6, 1918, during the first game of the World Series right here in Chicago. The National League Champs the Cubs, were playing the Red Sox in Comiskey Park rather than Wrigley Field because of the greater capacity of the home of the Cubs' crosstown rival the White Sox. Turned out they didn't need those extra seats as just under 20,000 fans showed up, the lowest turnout for the annual fall classic for as long as anybody could remember. The country was at war and there was a general consensus that the ballplayers were shirking their duty by not doing their part for the war effort. Nevertheless, the baseball season was shortened by about thirty games so that the players who were committed to the armed services could report for duty.

Unannounced during the seventh inning stretch, the band on hand broke into the strains of the Star Spangled Banner, which would not become the country's official national anthem for another thirteen years. Of course those were the days before public address systems so it took a little while before everyone in the ballpark recognized the tune the band was playing. By the time they got to the "rockets red glare", just about everyone in the ballpark was doffing their caps and singing along. As the band wrapped up the song, there was a huge ovation from the stands. (In case you're wondering, the Red Sox won that game on a brilliant shut-out from their young pitcher, Babe Ruth. The Red Sox won that World Series four games to two. They would not win another one for 86 years).

So impressive was the patriotic fervor that moment generated at Comiskey Park, theater impresario Harry Frazee who moonlighted as the owner of the Red Sox, "borrowed" the idea for his own ballpark as the series shifted to Boston. The only difference was in Boston, they played the song at the beginning of the game. The tradition of playing the National Anthem at every ballpark before every game didn't begin in earnest until World War II.

The late-great Comiskey Park, c. 1959, where no fewer than two long-standing traditions of singing songs at baseball games began.

Another tradition of playing a particular song at a particular moment during a ballgame also began in Comiskey Park when White Sox announcer Harry Caray who frequently bantered with fans within earshot of his broadcast booth at the old ballpark, started leading those fans in a cheerful, beer induced rendition of Take Me Out to the Ballgame, during the seventh inning stretch. Bill Veeck went to his grave insisting that when he bought the team in 1976, he asked Caray to sing the song over the ballpark's PA system so everyone could hear, but Caray refused. So one day the puckish Veeck, unbeknownst to Caray, hooked him up to the system anyway and a tradition was born. Hard to believe that Caray would have shied away from the extra attention but it's a good story and I'm sticking to it.

There is probably not a single American who does not know all the words to Take Me Out to the Ballgame  or to be more exact, the words of the refrain, which is heard at the seventh inning stretch at virtually every ballgame coast to coast. The lesser known verses tell the story of a young lady named Katie Casey. Here's her story:

Katie Casey was baseball mad,
Had the fever and had it bad.
Just to root for the home town crew,
Ev’ry sou
Katie blew.
On a Saturday her young beau
Called to see if she’d like to go
To see a show, but Miss Kate said “No,
I’ll tell you what you can do:

Refrain : Take me out to the ballgame...

Katie Casey saw all the games,
Knew the players by their first names.
Told the umpire he was wrong,
All along,
Good and strong.
When the score was just two to two,
Katie Casey knew what to do,
Just to cheer up the boys she knew,
She made the gang sing this song:

Refrain

The story of the song goes something like this: Jack Norworth was a 28 year old Tin Pan Alley composer who was ever on the prowl for inspirations for new songs. One day he found his inspiration on a subway billboard. The billboard read simply: "Baseball Today - Polo Grounds". He scribbled the lyrics to the song you see above on a napkin and delivered them to his partner Albert von Tilzer who promptly put the words to music. Norworth gave his song to his wife, a singer on the Vaudeville circuit. It became an instant hit when Edward Meeker recorded the song, in fact, Take me out to the Ballgame was top of the charts for the year 1908. (That year their home town Giants lost the NL pennant to the Cubs largely on account of a baserunning mistake made at the Polo Grounds, by their rookie first baseman Fred Merkle which has gone down in history as Merkle's Boner. The Cubs won the World Series that year. It would be 108 years until they would win another).

It turned out that neither Norworth nor von Tilzer had ever attended a ballgame when they wrote the game's unofficial anthem.  

The same can't be said for John Fogerty, the former leader of the band Creedence Clearwater Revival, who wrote what is perhaps the alternate unofficial anthem of baseball. Fogerty who grew up in California in the late forties and fifties didn't have a home town major league team to root for as a child, so he adopted the New York Yankees. That team's two great centerfielders, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle were his personal heroes. Describing the inspiration of the song's title, he told the New York Times in a 2010 interview:

Basically, I was reconnecting with that very special feeling I had about center field as a kid. People didn’t know what it meant, but it was important to me. It took me a while to remember about center field and how I felt about it, but once it came into my mind, I thought: ‘Oh, that’s perfect. That’s exactly what I want to say.'

The song's title of course is Centerfield, and you are bound to hear it in one form or another, either before, during, or after any professional ballgame.

It's a catchy song, well suited to put people into a cheerful mood before or during a game. While the incessant, rhythmic hand-clapping in its refrain can be a little grating after numerous listenings,  Fogerty's lyrics manage to cover all the bases (so to speak) of our national pastime, especially the child-like exuberance that anybody who has ever played, dreamed of playing, or just intently watched the game has experienced in his or her life, most especially on days like today, opening day:

 

Practically every line of the song has special relevance for me, the father of a son, currently a high school ballplayer who is mad about the game. For better or worse, he got that love from his old man.

Here are some examples:

Well, a-beat the drum and hold the phone
The sun came out today...

My son's team's season hasn't gotten off to an auspicious start this year as the sun in fact has not come out on game days. In fact as of today, about ten games have been rained out, with the outlook not good for this week.

Well, I spent some time in the Mudville Nine
Watching it from the bench...

The Mudville Nine is the home team featured in the poem Casey at the Bat, which I often read to my son when he was a small child. Unfortunately today, he can well relate to watching the game from the bench, which leads to the following plea:

Oh, put me in coach, I'm ready to play today Put me in coach, I'm ready to play today Look at me, I can be, centerfield

Yes indeed, my son plays centerfield.

And finally, the last beautiful verse is one that anybody who has ever cared about the game can relate to:

Got a beat-up glove, a home-made bat
And a brand new pair of shoes
You know I think it's time to give this game a ride
Just to hit the ball, and touch 'em all
A moment in the sun
It's a-gone and you can tell that one good-bye.

Then there are the references to some of the great centerfielders of all time, Joe Jackson, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, and of course, Joe DiMaggio. In the wonderful accompanying video, Mickey Mantle, Duke Snyder, Henry Aaron, (as a Milwaukee Brave) and Stan Musial (an occasional centerfielder) are also featured.

There's even a pointed reference to the late Chuck Berry, lifting a line from one of his songs:

A-roundin' third and headed for home
It's a brown-eyed handsome man...

Which is followed by a Berryesque guitar riff.

Fogerty has said the image in his mind when he sang about the "Brown eyed handsome man" was none other than Jackie Robinson.

Every human emotion can be found in the game of baseball, usually magnified ten times. It's a game designed to break your heart as A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote. But not today. It's all hope and optimism on Opening Day.

As we saw last year, anything can happen in baseball, heck, the Chicago Cubs could even win the World Series.

On this day, there is no better song to play than the alternate/unofficial anthem of baseball, John Fogerty's Centerfield, because its sums up the game to a tee, except for the sad, melancholy stuff. That will come later.

Unless you consider the official National Anthem of the country AND the game of baseball, whose unofficial last words every red blooded American knows are the happiest words in the English language. No they're not "the land of the free and the home of the brave", they come just after that.

The words are "play ball".

Opening Day: A Cautionary Tale

Hold on to your hat, we're on the verge of opening day of another major league baseball season, the brief time when there are no winners and no losers, just a bunch of teams and their fans ready to face a new season where anything can happen. Oh there are the predictions, my boy just read them to me in the car a few minutes ago. The team with the longest odds against them are the Philadelphia Phillies, a team that historically has been even more of a perennial loser than, ahem, the Chicago Cubs, who at four to one, are at the top of the charts to go all the way. On paper, they are the best team in baseball. After a splendid season in 2015, they have done nothing but solidify their lineup in just about every aspect.

To hear fly-by-night fans talk about the Cubs, you'd expect them to win 130 games this year and sweep through the playoffs and World Series despite having all their batters hitting from the opposite side of the plate than they normally do, just to give the other teams a chance.

Of course serious Cubs fans don't let any of that talk go to their heads. They've lived their entire lives filled with the hope that this might be the year in April, only to have that hope crushed to a pulp by June, or smashed more cruelly in rarefied seasons like last year, when (as I once put it so poetically if I do say so myself), the Wrigley Field ivy turns a lovely shade of bronze.  

The only thing having the best team on paper plus two dollars and a quarter will get you is a ride on the "L". As they say, that's why they actually play the game.

For my team, the White Sox, well the odds makers put them somewhere in the lower half of the pack, but they've made some moves of their own that should improve the team. Heck I even heard some folks predict them to win their division, a tall order considering that the two time American League champion and current World Series champs, the Kansas City Royals, come out of that division.

In other words, this season, Sox fans stand to be less disappointed come October than Cubs fans. If the Cubs don't win the 2016 World Series, (Vegas says four chances to one they won't), it will be a huge disappointment. By contrast, forty to one chances that the Sox won't win it all means all they have to do is show some improvement over last year and most fans will be pretty happy.

If I sound less enthused this opening day than in years past it's because I've come to realize my love/hate relationship with the game. In our family, baseball didn't hibernate for the winter as my son made his high school freshman team last fall and has been involved in 6am practices and after school conditioning ever since. His team's season began in earnest three weeks ago. Starting so early in Chicago means that most of the scheduled games have been rained out. Today's game was snowed out.

All that practice on top of the normal demands and rigors of high school has taken its toll. It's been hard, sometimes frustrating work and I am extremely proud of my boy in the pursuit of his dream. I've been thinking a lot about that dream for the past six or seven years, wondering especially when and how it will end. Baseball dreams after all, always end, and they never end happily. For the lucky ones, the dream fizzles out, to be replaced by some other, hopefully more attainable dream. For most serious players, the end of the dream is imposed upon them, when they find out they are not good enough to make it to the next level. Even for those who are lucky enough to make it to the highest level of the game, the big leagues, the end of the dream is still imposed upon them, either by superior competition, or that age old nemesis of every athlete, time. Yes, Joe DiMaggio did quit on his own terms, but only after his body told him he could no longer play like Joe DiMaggio. His was perhaps the happiest of baseball endings, 37 years old when he retired, a mere youngster in other walks of life, but ancient for baseball.

Kids read about the charmed lives of major league baseball players, the ungodly money, the glamour, the celebrity, and all the trappings that go along with those things. Most of all they see their heroes performing as heroes do, coming through in the clutch, winning the game and the season for their team, and watching the public adulation that follows. What kids don't realize is the higher the mountaintop climbed, the greater the fall to the ground.

With my son's dream in mind, I wrote the following piece a few years ago about one of those prodigious falls that are all too common in the great game of baseball:

On October 28, 1986, I heard the following joke:

First Person: I heard Bill Buckner attempted suicide last night.

Second Person: Really? That's terrible.

First Person: Yeah, but he let the train roll through his legs.

So you want to be a big league ball player? Well first you have to be good. Then you have to have parents or some kind of mentor willing to support your dream who will go the extra mile to play catch with you every day, teach you how to hit and throw the ball, pay for little league, then the traveling team, and be willing to get you to all the games, even if they're two or three states over.

Maybe if you're lucky, you'll make the high school team and if you're good enough, you could be the star of the team. If you're exceptional, you might be able to get a scholarship to go to college and play ball, or if you're phenomenal, you might even get noticed by a professional scout who just might sign you up for a tryout.

Beware though, there are lots of ballplayers out there who'd love to be in your position; make one slip up, and they will be in your position. But you're really good, have a terrific attitude and luck's been on your side. You've worked your butt off for years, suffering through some real asshole coaches and you've finally made it into the minor leagues. Slowly you work your way up through the ranks, schlepping yourself and your gear onto buses for endless rides to podunk towns.

Eventually you're lucky enough and good enough to get your chance at the Big Show. It certainly doesn't get any easier up there, the only exception being someone else gets to carry your gear and you travel from town to town in a plane. And oh yes, there's the money. Now, not only are lots of people hungry for your job, there are lots of others who are after your scratch as well.

Somehow, by hook or by crook, despite the injuries and the nagging pain you've been playing through for years, you built yourself a respectable career at the highest level attainable in your profession. Before you know it, you have more games behind you than in front of you and the twilight of your career is fast approaching. But you end up on a team with a shot at the Series and this will be your last chance at a ring, the dream of every kid who ever picks up a bat and a ball. That ring is so close you can taste it, you're two runs up and only one strike away.

Then things start to unravel; they tie it up but no problem, you have plenty of time to get back into the game. Next thing you know, the ball is hit to you, an easy roller to first, routine play, all you have to do is move a little to your left, pick up the ball and make an easy toss to the pitcher covering the bag, inning over. It hurts like hell but your gimpy legs get you there OK, you bend down and get into proper fielding position, glove square on the ground. Somehow the ball just seems to skip past the glove, you don't know, it all happened so fast. The ball goes between your legs and into right field, the runner scores from second, game over.

Never mind that your relief pitchers gave up two runs all on their own after two men were out in the inning with nobody on, one strike away from winning it all.

Never mind the wild pitch allowing the tying run to score that your catcher could have but didn't stop.

Never mind that the batter was running so hard down the line you might not have had a chance to get him anyway.

Never mind the team you were playing didn't win 108 games that year for nothing.

Never mind that your team had the chance to pick you up in the next game but blew a three run lead, and lost game seven of the World Series.

Never mind that your team probably wouldn't have gotten there in the first place without you.

It doesn't matter.

Despite having had a terrific career, jerks not worthy of carrying your jock strap will blame you for losing the Series, their children will taunt your children. Years later, fans of the team will have the gall to say they "forgive" you (as if there was anything to forgive), but they won't ever let go. In the end, you will go to your grave remembered as the guy who let the ball roll through his legs to end game six of the '86 Series.

Remember son, for every World Series hero, for every one Bill Mazeroski or Joe Carter, every Madison Bumgarner or Salvador Perez, there are dozens and dozens of Bill Buckners.

---

We've been through this before, baseball is a game designed to break your heart, and as a father, I'm just a little protective of my son.

I know, I know, this isn't the time for such talk, it's the beginning of the season when all hope... well you know the drill.

House league, baseball at its purest. I miss those days.

The truth is, the meaning of baseball at this point in my life lies entirely in my ability to share it with my son. Despite the gratification that comes with his advancing in the game,  I do miss the days when every at bat of his didn't mean the difference between getting more playing time or sitting on the bench. I miss the days when I could deep down root for his team as well as for him, as now his competition for a spot on the roster comes from his teammates, not their opponents. And I miss the days of playing catch with my son just for fun, without feeling compelled to critique his technique or remind him incessantly to listen to his coaches. I miss the days when baseball was just a game and all was right with the world.

But mostly I dread the day when his baseball dream will come to an end, as it eventually will. Only the date is uncertain. That's the day his heart will be broken.

On the bright side, when that day comes, well perhaps a little later, maybe we'll be able to fully enjoy the great game together again with no strings attached, as it was meant to be, just two gloves, a baseball, and a father and son.

Until that day comes, we'll just have to suck it up and play some hard ball.

Another Opening Day

Chicago is abuzz this week with great anticipation over the upcoming seasons for the major league baseball teams on both sides of town. A cynic might say, "haven't we heard that all before?" But a true fan (short for fanatic), cannot be a cynic, at least not this time of year.

For me, this year's opening day brings with it a touch of melancholy as here in this city, we're still mourning the recent loss of two of our most beloved players, Ernie Banks and Minnie Miñoso.

On a personal note, high school is right around the corner for my boy, meaning that his Little League career will end soon, bringing to a close a happy chapter of our lives together.

Like every recurring event on the calendar, another opening day brings to mind the passage of time and memories of things past. Of the handful of major league opening days I've attended in my life, two come immediately to mind. Both of them were historic games for the home team, the Chicago White Sox. I was at the inaugural game of US Cellular Field, (then called new Comiskey Park), in 1991, obtaining the hard-to-get ticket from a friend in exchange for photographing his son's Bar Mitzvah. In the end it turned out my friend got the better end of the bargain as the Detroit Tigers ruined the opening of the new park by pummeling the Sox 16-0. To make it worse, the demolition of old Comiskey Park across the street, a place I had spent countless happy hours of my life, had just begun. The south-east corner of the grand old ballpark was already gone, exposing a depressing view of the rubble-strewn right field where Babe Ruth once patrolled.

A more poignant memory is opening day 1976 at old Comiskey. My friend Jeremy Pollack had two tickets of his father's, and he invited me to join him. His dad was an advertising guy who had some pretty sweet grandstand seats between third base and home plate. I remember those seats well as it my first and only time in that old ballpark where I could see the entire field without some kind of obstruction blocking the view.

That opening day was historic because it was the first game of Bill Veeck's second run as owner of the White Sox. If you don't know him, you should; Bill Veeck was perhaps the single most colorful character in the history of baseball. Veeck was born into the game as his father, William Veeck Sr. was the president of the Cubs under the Wrigley family. After Veeck Sr. died, his son worked for the Wrigleys and was responsible for the building of two of the most beloved features of Wrigley Field, the hand operated scoreboard, and the ivy covered outfield walls.

Veeck Jr. became a renegade owner who stood the game on its head with his devil-may-care approach to running a team. For years he was derided by his fellow owners and some baseball purists for the circus-like atmosphere he brought to the game. He's probably best known for stunts like sending a midget up to bat when he owned the old St. Louis Browns in 1951, and the infamous Disco Demolition Night here in Chicago in 1979,

But Bill Veeck's legacy goes much deeper than that. After World War II when he owned the Cleveland Indians, he singly-handedly integrated the American League by signing Larry Doby who would become only the second African American to officially play in the big leagues in the twentieth century. While other American League teams steadfastly refused to include black players, Veeck continued to do so, including his signing of the first black Latin American player in the MLB, Minnie Miñoso, and the man who by some accounts was the greatest pitcher of any color to ever play the game, Satchel Paige.

Veeck's purchase of the White Sox after the 1975 season would be his last hurrah. As Jeremy and I took our seats before the game, who should pass right by us but these three gentlemen reenacting the famous Archibald MacNeal Willard painting, The Spirit of '76 (aka Yankee Doodle). That's Veeck himself, peg leg and all, on the right playing the fife. The flag bearer was Paul Richards who managed the team that year. The tableau vivant was in honor of the American Bicentennial, as the game took place just months before the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Upon close examination of the photograph, you can probably find Jeremy and me in the stands at the top right corner of the picture.

I just finished reading a splendid biography of Veeck, written by Paul Dickenson titled: Bill Veeck: Baseball's Greatest Maverick, picking it up on the recommendation of someone who told me the book's appendix addressed an issue I've been interested in since I first wrote about it in this space two years ago. The issue is this: did Bill Veeck make a serious attempt to purchase the Philadelphia Phillies in 1943, intending to fill the team with star players from the Negro Leagues, only to have the plan quashed by MLB execs?

Bear in mind that Jackie Robinson wasn't signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers until 1945 and would not make his debut with the team until two years later. If the story is true and Veeck had actually pulled it off, then he, not Branch Rickey, would have become the man lionized as the Moses who led baseball out of the dark ages of the color-line.

The story of Veeck's failed attempt to buy the woebegone '43 Phillies, was challenged in an article that appeared in a publication of the highly regarded Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). The article titled, A Baseball Myth Exploded: Bill Veeck and the Sale of the 1943 Phillies, alleges that Veeck made the story up. The authors' case for their accusation was that the only written documentation they could find of the event was Veeck's own description of it in his autobiography, Veeck-- as in Wreck.

I won't go into details but Dickenson makes a very good case for Veeck by debunking the SABR article, which has also been discredited by other baseball historians, including SABR members. In the end it hardly matters since with or without the Phillies episode, Veeck's credentials as one of the most important individuals responsible for integrating the game, are unassailable.

In his biography, Dickenson portrays Bill Veeck as a man of deep courage, generosity, and good will. Coming from a privileged background, he could have easily avoided military service in World War II, or at least sought out a cushy officer's commission. Instead, despite his age and family status, he insisted upon entering the Marine Corps as an enlisted man. On top of that, he requested a transfer from the backup position at Bougainville where he was assigned, to the Third Division which was about to invade the island of Guam in the South Pacific. The transfer went through but as fate would have it, word of the transfer didn't reach Veeck in time, so he ended up manning an anti-aircraft gun as part of a defense battalion, rather than being put directly into harm's way as he had wished. That transfer snafu more than likely saved his life. Still, injuries incurred during his service in Bouganville ultimately cost him much of his right leg below the knee, hence the wooden leg you see in the picture.

Despite Veeck's fame as promoter extraordinaire, his baseball acumen was right up there with the best of them. Consider this: between 1947 and 1964, the New York Yankees won the American League pennant in all but three seasons. Two of those seasons, they lost the pennant to teams owned by Bill Veeck, the 1948 Indians and the 1959 White Sox. The third was the '54 Indians, a team which still had vestiges of the Cleveland team that Veeck once owned. Despite being under-capitalized in his second go-around with the White Sox, in 1977 Veeck had the brilliant idea of obtaining big time players in their option year before they became free agents and commanded exorbitant money. That "rent-a-team" became known as the "South Side Hit Men" and, filled with sluggers like Oscar Gamble, Ralph Garr and Ritchie Zisk, led their division for most of the season, ultimately winning 90 games, and creating more excitement in Chicago baseball than had been seen in years. And the heart of the 1983 White Sox, the first Chicago team to make the post-season since Veeck's "Go Go Sox" of '59, was made up of personnel (such as right fielder Harold Baines and manager Tony La Russa), who were brought to the team by Veeck.

But what made Bill Veeck truly stand head and shoulders above his peers in baseball, was his accessibility to the fans, and the belief that he was nothing without them. Perhaps his greatest promotion was inspired by a tongue-in-cheeck letter from a Cleveland Indians fan by the name of Joe Early who wrote:

Now they want a Bill Veeck Night. It’s a good idea, but here’s another suggestion. Let’s have a Joe Earley Night. I pay my rent, and my landlord spends it on things that keep business stimulated. I keep the gas station attendant in business by buying gas regularly. I keep the milkman in clover by buying milk. He uses trucks and tires and as a result big industry is kept going. The paper boy delivers the paper, wears out a pair of shoes occasionally and the shoemaker wins. My wife keeps a grocer and a butcher (don’t we all) in business and the department stores as well. A lot of people depend on me (and you) so let us all get together, and send in your contributions for that new car for Good Old Joe Earley Night.

In response, on September 28, 1948 at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, in the midst of a hotly contested pennant race, Veeck took the microphone and before 60,000 fans, officially declared that evening: “Good Old Joe Earley Night”, in honor not only of Joe, but of all the hard working Joes who represented the vast majority of the fans of the team. The crowd went wild, especially after Veeck handed out gag gifts to the Earleys including a broken down old horse, and a new house, actually an outhouse wheeled in from center field. The whole event wasn’t a complete gag, the team then presented the couple with a brand new convertible and other valuable take home gifts, as well as a handsome check in their names to their favorite charity, cancer research.

Until the day he died, Bill Veeck's telephone number was listed. I know this for a fact because a former workmate of mine, in perhaps a slightly altered state, picked up the phone early one morning and dialed the Veeck residence in Hyde Park to express some concerns about the White Sox. Veeck's wife Mary Frances picked up the phone (as Bill was probably still out on the town), and the two of them talked baseball for about an hour. Mrs. Veeck won my friend over to her husband's cause as she continues to do to this day as a spry 98 year old.

In the end, Veeck couldn't compete with the multi-millionaires who were taking over the game. He sold the White Sox in 1980 to the group that still owns the team. Put off by their comment that they were going to turn the team into a "first class operation", Veeck for a while boycotted the Sox for the team on the north side and their "friendly confines." There he could be found, usually shirtless in the bleachers he built, sitting in the cheap seats, holding court with the rest of the fans whom he felt knew the game the best. According to Veeck: "the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the price of the seats." When the Cubs decided to sell the bleacher tickets in advance, thereby making them available to the highest bidder in the secondary ticket market, he left them too.

Bill Veeck is responsible for many aspects of baseball that we take for granted these days. He was an early supporter of the designated hitter rule, and a fervent critic of the reserve clause. He introduced the exploding scoreboard, players' names on the back of their uniforms, as well as many of the side show attractions that appeal mostly to kids and indifferent spectators. To many traditionalist fans, myself included, many of the things Veeck either supported or introduced to the game annoy us to no end. But Veeck understood that if a baseball team were to depend upon only the serious fans, it would be "out of business by July." To that end, one of his proudest achievements was vastly improving the condition of the ladies rooms of his ballparks. Those efforts paid off in spades as many of the attendance records his teams set were due in a large part to the numbers of "female members of the species" (as he preferred to call them) in the seats.

Despite all the antics and his puckish nature, deep down Bill Veeck truly had the best interest of the game, the fans and its players at heart, often at his own expense. Veeck understood that God did not hand down the rules of baseball on a tablet to Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown. He was the kind of guy who respected the spirit of the game, but didn't necessarily respect the letter of its rules, which he felt had been used time and again to strangle the game and the people who play and watch it. Toward the end of his book, Paul Dickenson quotes Veeck's son Mike who commented on how his dad would have reacted to his induction into the National baseball Hall of Fame in 1991. The quote I think sums up Veeck pretty well. Mike Veeck said:

My father would have loved Cooperstown. He would've loved to set up a table on Main Street, put a case of beer next to a sawhorse, and sign autographs for free while the other inductees charge $30 a copy.

His dad was one of the good guys in an industry where such things are few and far between.

We lost Bill Veeck in 1986. Ernie Banks and Minnie Miñoso are gone, and as of late last year, so too is my friend Jeremy. Because of their presence, the four of them all left the world a much better place than they found it.

The beautiful thing about baseball is that it ties together the past, the present and the future seamlessly. This is especially true on opening day when we remember fondly those who went before us, as our hope springs eternal, looking forward to a brilliant season, all the while playing the game in real time.

We trudge on without our fallen heroes knowing full well that everything we have we owe to them. The best thing we can do is pass on the stories of their adventures to those who will be around when we're gone too.

That's baseball, that's life.

Now lets go out and play some ball.

Boy did we need this one

After the longest winter anyone in these parts can remember, it just so happened that the day of the first outdoor practice of the season came on the first warm day of the year. And what do you know, despite there having been considerable snow on the ground just last week, today is Opening Day in the big leagues, a day that should be a national holiday. And it's supposed to be even warmer than yesterday. 

The baseball gods surely must be smiling upon us.

There is a famous quote from the cultural historian Jacques Barzun regarding baseball and the American soul. You've probably heard it.  Taken out of context as it usually is, it sounds simplistic and trite. Here is the quote, neither simplistic nor trite, in more detail but still far from complete:

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams. The big league games are too fast for the beginner and the newspapers don't help. To read them with profit you have to know a language that comes easy only after philosophy has taught you to judge practice. Here is scholarship that takes effort on the part of the outsider, but it is so bred into the native that it never becomes a dreary round of technicalities. The wonderful purging of the passions that we all experienced in the fall of 51, the despair groaned out over the fate of the Dodgers, from whom the league pennant was snatched at the last minute, give us some idea of what Greek tragedy was like. Baseball is Greek in being national, heroic, and broken up in the rivalries of city-states. How sad that Europe knows nothing like it! Its Olympics generate anger, not unity, and its interstate politics follow no rules that a people can grasp. At least Americans understand baseball, the true realm of clear ideas.*

I've always been a baseball fan but I fell in love with the game in earnest during a ball game at U.S. Cellular Field here in Chicago, 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 in the year 2000 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 once took for granted. It was the game of my country and its people, a precious institution I'd be entrusted to pass on to the next generation.

My son has never read Barzun, but he certainly would understand the connection between baseball and Greek tragedy; he has experienced it himself. Baseball as the late A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote: "is designed to break your heart." My heart has been broken along with my son's on many an occasion.

But not today.

As is my annual tradition, I repeat two truly simplistic and trite axioms, that define what this day is all about:

The slate is wiped clean,

and

All hope springs eternal.

If you don't buy that, maybe these photos will help:

Undisclosed child on his first opening day, undisclosed date.

Aforementioned child's first at bat.

Opening day at its purest, the future secure,

play ball!

* Excerpt from: God's Country and Mine: A Declaration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words - Jacques Barzun
You can read more from this passage here.