Baseball is like family.
It is my father telling me stories from his childhood about Mel Ott and Lou Gehrig, stories from when he was a young man, of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants and New York Yankees and their timeless trinity of transcendence, of now, of new heroes and hope.
It is my mother calling me whenever the Yankees and Mets are in the playoffs, praying with me for them to win, nervous and cheerful a continent away but near as if sitting there watching the game with me.
Baseball is my brothers and sisters and the seasons we've shared in different decades with different lineups of moments frozen in the mind as the once were, transporting in time to be as we were then, eternally in spring, joyful in autumn.
Baseball is my nephews and nieces playing in leagues, rooting them on, watching them grow, watching their joy, knowing that these new baseball moments will be old baseball moments, their frozen moments, things they will tell their children's children when we are grey or gone.
Baseball is me, a child again, bat in hand, hope in soul and dreams in heart, reborn each year, each spring when the grass smells new and the days grow long and bright and warm and my friends and I are kids again, playing in a schoolyard or a park, checking scores and reading stats, dreaming always and hoping, knowing, that in baseball the clock cannot stop you and that there's always a chance for the epic to occur for stories to be told to those yet born.
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