Baseball

[ed note: So, being the lazy slug that I am, I cannot decide what to write on and thought, "hey, why not play blog-roulette and let people suggest subjects, any subject, and write on them?". So, from the suggestion of my big sister the subject of this latest post. Thanks Sissy]


Baseball. It always brings to mind long summer afternoons of fading daylight, long shadows, long fly balls hit to the outfields. Also, muggy and tropical night games played under klieg lights that attracted the moths who would fly in and out of the shadows. Dodger Stadium on smoggy days; elementary ballfields on spring mornings; Fenway Park; Candlestick Park; Yankee Stadium; Padres Stadium. Poring over the stats and records of present and past players. Listening to the mellifluous tones of Dodger announcer Vin Scully, who was so popular that you heard his voice everywhere in Los Angeles in the summer, from cars driving by windows down, from radios on park benches, and from fan's hand-held radios in Dodger Stadium itself. Watching the World Series on television, watching the World Series on television with the volume down and the radio turned up because Vin Scully on the radio was always better than any of the television play-by-play announcers. These are just a few of the memories and thoughts that Baseball brings back for me.

I am certainly one of those romanticists who believes, sincerely, that baseball is somehow a link to our shared past, that it stretches back in one unbroken chain to the 19th century; that its New York origins and particular slower-paced rhythms are evocative of a "simpler" time. Yes yes, I am definitely viewing the "game" with rose-tinged glasses, easily glossing over the facts that its not truly a game as a high-money profession that rose out of humble origins and shook off its legacies of racism and institutional indentured servitude to morph into something still recognizable by its inventors and still a wholly new and strange beast.

And yet, the basic tenets of the game has remained the same since it dim origins in the 1860s: 3 bases, home plate, 3 outs, pitcher/catcher/infielders/outfielders/batters. I think this is one of the reasons I like it, this feeling of a unbroken lineage stretching back 150 years. Whatever the emotional tugs may be, whatever the reasons, let them remain dim and unknown, it doent matter anyways; what really matters, what I really want to say is that I love baseball; there was a time when I ate, drank and slept baseball; sadly those days are no more. And while the passion has dimmed my understanding has deepened. Even after that disastrous half-season of Little League my love for the game did not die off.

Whatever. The new season is coming round. In a week and a half we will have Opening Day, the greatest day of the year. Never mind March 20, screw that day, Opening Day is the first day of Spring. This will be the day my beloved Dodgers take the field once again, to renew their never ending quest for dominance and another World Series ring. Da Bums. Even though I grew up in LA I always felt a inherent sense of history stretching back to those bygone days in Brooklyn (thank you Mom), Ebbetts Field long gone into the dust, the trolley cars of Flatbush Ave, the speed of which forced pedestrians to dodge out of the way, ergo the name of the team. It always struck me as somehow heroic and golden, those years in Brooklyn, specifically the Dodgers of Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese; but what the hell do I know, I wasnt there, I am just imagining a past that probably had no true resemblance to reality, based on what I have read and cooked up in my fevered imagination.

This I do know to be true: This should be a good year for Dodger/Giants fans. The Giants won the World Series last Fall going away, hardly breaking a sweat against a very good Detroit Tigers team. Last year the Giants became a dominating team, for the first time since.....well since never. Seriously. They even did this without the services of Melky Cabrera, who had to sit out most of the season due to steroids abuse. Which means, unfortunately, that they still cant shake the ghost, and curse, of Barry Bonds. The Dodgers, having played the last decade under a owner who was using the team as his personal ATM, got sold to a ownership group that includes Magic Johnson, who have made a true commitment to winning, went out and got Adrian Gonzalez and Zach Grienke, two dominating players, and will bring to bear the largest payroll in baseball, which brings to my mind a vision of swinging bags of money.....Anyways, this should be a good year and I will make the prediction now: Dodgers. All. Tha. Way.

Play Ball!