Tonight is the Toronto Blue Jays' home opener. Back in 2003, I ran a poem called "Baseball Is" Here's an excerpt:
"Baseball is a language of very simple words that tell unbelievably magic tales.
Baseball is three brothers in the same uniform on the same team for one brief summer
Captured forever in a black and white photo on a table by the couch.
Baseball is a glove on a shelf, oiled and tightly wrapped,
Slumbering through the stark winter months."
Slumbering no longer. Baseball is, again.
Here are some quick tips for adding simple Textile formatting to your comments, though you can also use proper HTML tags:
*This* puts text in bold.
_This_ puts text in italics.
bq. This "bq." at the beginning of a paragraph, flush with the left hand side and with a space after it, is the code to indent one paragraph of text as a block quote.
To add a live URL, "Text to display":http://windsofchange.net/ (no spaces between) will show up as Text to display. Always use this for links - otherwise you will screw up the columns on our main blog page.
Question is, are the Jays going to play some baseball this year? Are the Royals?
I find it interesting that my three favorite games--baseball, golf, and cricket--are all both asymmetrical and non-time-bound (ie, in kairos time, rather than chronos time for you enthusiasts of Greek). This is probably related to the fact that I am a profoundly RURAL person (full-time farmer with no off-farm job).
In that regard, baseball can be an effective antidote to the very symmetrical, chronos-time-bound world in which most people live.
If you live anywhere near an American League city, find out when Seattle will be in town, get yourself a seat a couple of rows back, out halfway along the right field line, and watch Ichiro play.
Get a seat close enough to hear the singles whhishhing along the grass. You'll remember it a long time.
Baseball, much like golf and fishing, would disapear overnight if they werent intractably connected with beer. Ive watched baseball sober, never again.
Joe, I cant resist tweaking ya a little. Every time i hear someone waxing poetic on the magic of baseball i cant help but thinking of this forgotten but brilliant SNL skit:
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/89/89qsportsmachine.phtml
"Sam Donaldson Voice-over: It's "George F. Will's Sports Machine", the sports trivia show for the real fan. And now, here's your quizmaster, syndicated columnist, George F. Will.
[ cut to game studio, with an audience of die-hard sports fans cheering, as George F Will enters ]
George F. Will: Good evening. "Sports, say the ancient Greeks, is morally serious because mankind's noblest aim, is the loving contemplation of worthy things." That's an excerpt from my new book on baseball entitled.. [ holds up book ] "Men at Work", and I'd say it's particularly a propos in light of today's Expo-Padre game. [ audience issues a blank, sluggish stare ] Joining me today are two gentlemen who would no doubt agree. First, former slugger for the Philadelphia Phillies, Mike Schmidt. Good day, Mike. Tell us, what do you miss most since retiring from baseball last year?
Mike Schmidt: Well, George, I guess I miss going to the ballpark every day.
George F. Will: Ah yes, ballparks. In humanity there exists a vestigial memory of an enclosed green space as a place of freedom or play.
Mike Schmidt: [ confused ] Yeah. I guess."
The skit ends with Schmidt and Tommy Lasorda daring George Will to actually throw a baseball and he totally throws like a girl so they chase him out of the studio with Sam Donaldson screaming "He's getting away!!". Priceless.
The did run some very good skits on SNL. This one may not be quite even with the infamous William Shatner Captain Kirk convention skit, but it's up there.