Baseball Love

Another baseball season is winding down. Some teams will head into playoffs and others will be closing their ballfields and clubhouses until April of next year. It always brings a lump to my throat to see the season end.

People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring. —Rogers Hornsby

I revealed my love for the game in a post that first appeared at my WordPress blog on April 27, 2012. I wrote how during the summertime, we can travel almost anywhere in this country and see a ballgame in action on a field somewhere, from little kids playing T-ball and Little League, to adults—male and female—whacking a softball around. I have fond memories of my Little League and Pony League years, my high school team years, and my years with men with beer guts as big as medicine balls playing the game fast and mean. Have you ever tried to tag out a speeding locomotive?

Where I live, even the Amish men and boys play the game, batting and fielding in their light blue shirts, dark blue pants and suspenders, and black hats and boots. I’ve played against them with a ball so big it’s almost impossible to hit it beyond the infield. They call it Mountain Ball and it takes a strong person to play the game well, so it seems fitting the players are built like miners.

When I’m not playing the game, I’m watching it at every opportunity—that’s how much I love the game. When I was in Italy and traveled the coast of the Mediterranean Sea for two years, I saw children play stickball, wiffleball, and kickball games, from within tight and narrow city streets to wide-open pastures on mountainsides. Baseball has a charm—an appeal to all. Branch Rickey, the man known for breaking Major League Baseball’s color and race barrier, said baseball’s charm is its “exactitudes and adjustments of physical ability to hazardous chance.” Scraped knees and bloody noses are the proud hallmarks of every kid who has ever played the game and scored against the opposing team.

Even when a baseball game’s hitting stalls for a few innings, I enjoy watching its so-called “lack of action.” That’s the best time to scrutinize the pitcher and catcher, as well as the home plate umpire. There’s always something to watch in baseball. American cartoonist and illustrator Saul Steinberg called the game “an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem.”

Give me a baseball game any day, even when there’s snow on the ground.

Until my next post, peace and love.

Steve, 9/21/2024

This post “Baseball Love” copyright © 2012 and 2024 Steven Leo Campbell at stevecampbellcreations.com – All rights reserved.