My calendar alerted me that today, at 1:10 PM, the Mets would host the Cardinals to open the 2018 MLB Season. For me, there’s nothing like another baseball season to open the floodgates of memories and emotions. My own childhood is drenched in baseball, from my own meager attempts to play organized ball–those memories are mostly bad–to nights watching my Mets on the couch wearing my Mets cap and throwing a ball into my glove. I recall distinctly hoping for a tie late into the game so I could convince my mom to let me stay up. I still love a tied ballgame in the late innings.
My children’s lives were also deeply immersed in baseball, both playing and following the now defunct Florida Marlins on their improbable World Series run in 2003. It remains the best baseball season of my life, and while Marlins ownership destroyed the relationship I had with that team since their inception, I can only be grateful for the experience I had that year and hope my kids don’t forget it. They were only 11 & 8 at the time.
Keith Hernandez in the Mets booth dropped a Yogi Berra quote early in the game–it’s deja vu all over again–which got me nostalgic for the heroes of old. Reading Yogi’s Wiki page tells the tale of a remarkable life filled with an entire team’s worth of achievements, but they all belong to one man. I then looked up the Triple Crown to see when it was last accomplished to see former Marlins World Series hero Miguel Cabrera (Miguelito to us in 2003 as he was only a young rookie then) did it in 2012. Miggie broke a long gap in the Crown, but the National League Triple Crown gap still remains and one man caused me to do a double take. Rogers Hornsby’s career accomplishments seem impossible. I read them twice and still can’t accept that a human could do what he did.
I was going to try to watch the Mets game with one of the pirated sites I’ve used over the last few years, but after pop ups, buffering and redirects, I decided a subscription to MLB TV would be money well spent. Much to my surprise, I received a $40 discount for being a veteran of the armed forces. $75 to watch as many games as I want, every team, every day, seems almost too good to be true. The Mets did not disappoint as they pulled off a decisive opening day victory, so I switched to their cross town rivals the NY Yankees and watched them win their first game as well.
I have that old familiar feeling of baseball in the background of my life. The long hot summer feels a little less miserable in its coming knowing I will have baseball as the theme, running constantly in the daily stream of consciousness, with its ups and downs, its jaw dropping moments, its slow building tension as a no hitter gets late into the game, walk off home runs, extra inning marathons and the ever present beauty of the most important one on one matchup in all of team sports: the pitcher vs. hitter. I tend to root for the pitcher the majority of the time. My boy stood out on that mound many times, facing a lineup of kids itching to get in the box and smack the crap out of the ball. With the game on the line, in countless pressure situations, I thought how alone he must feel out there with everyone watching him and waiting to see if he could get the batter out or if the game was about to be lost. I’m proud to say that more often than not, my boy was the victor.
Baseball is a simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. But it’s much deeper than that. Many more gifted scribblers than I have pontificated on the great game, so I’ll close with Annie Savoy quoting Walt Whitman: Walt Whitman once said, “I see great things in baseball. It’s our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us.” You could look it up.
Joe's Blog 