Robservations: Baseball is finally here again
“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.”
— James Earl Jones (as Terence Mann), “Field of Dreams.”
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God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.
It’s finally baseball season once again.
Yes, I know the official first game of the season was Sunday night, between the Rangers and Angels. But Monday was actually the day that is considered by some (including the seven people that will be losing to a certain sports editor in fantasy ball this year) as a national holiday.
Opening Day arrived once again, after months of anticipation. I can’t believe the banks and schools were open.
In fact, back in the glory days at MTSU, they used to close school for Opening Day each year. At least we convinced ourselves of that, as we switched from game to game on our dorm room TV sets, promising ourselves that we’d make sure to copy that day’s notes from someone during the next class session.
Through years past, however, it seems a lot of America has fallen out of love with its national pastime.
The game’s too boring, they say. (Someone on Monday actually said — out loud, in my presence — that he’d rather watch paint dry.) Or else they use the work stoppage of 1994 or today’s high-dollar contracts as their excuses for being “turned off” by the game.
But to those people, I offer this. Don’t think of it as slow, or boring. Because baseball’s a game of anticipation. You don’t concentrate on what is happening, you think about what could happen, depending on the results of the next pitch. Then, when that pitch comes, the excitement of the game comes with it.
Of course, that next pitch will likely be fouled back into the stands, but don’t worry. There’s always the next pitch.
And don’t think of today’s players as high-priced prima donnas who earn huge salaries to play a kid’s game, whine over the fact that they make $18 million a year instead of $20 million, and miss weeks of action because of muscle pulls and turf toes that wouldn’t keep your average garbage man off his feet for more than 10 seconds.
Instead, think of them as modern-day warriors, who give their all every day to bring glory to themselves, their team and their city — that is, until they get a splinter in their little finger and have to go on the 15-day disabled list.
OK, so maybe the game can be a little bit boring. And maybe some bad apples and the contracts they’ve negotiated have cast a stigma on the rest of the bunch. But there has to be a reason to still be in love with the game. There just has to.
Wait. I’ve got it.
The Cubs are picked to finish second in their division this year, and some actually say they could contend for a pennant. That should be reason enough for you to get excited, shouldn’t it?