What is your favorite day of the year? Your birthday? Christmas? July 4th? The start of the Packers season? For me it's today. Opening Day. The start of the major league baseball season. Even the name evokes a new beginning and “opening” a gift given to us every year by the folks who play this game at the highest level. And it's not only the players that make it the special thing it is. Growing up and hearing the dulcet tones of Ernie Harwell and Jack Buck sailing through the scratchy airwaves from Detroit and St. Louis. Jack Brickhouse in Chicago. Curt Gowdy, Tony Kubek and Joe Garogiola on the Game of The Week. And, of course, Merle Harmon and Bob Uecker from Milwaukee. To the inventors of the box score I raise a glass. The daily paper and now countless web-sites would bring you a composite of every game to peruse and break-down. A good scorecard can tell you everything that happened in a game…but it takes a good writer to tell you why it happened the way it did. And I love good writing. Baseball is one of those sports that just lends itself to great writing. Dating back to the late 1800's we have seen and read thousands of stories and books about the game. The title of todays blog comes from a book by Thomas Boswell. He was a sportswriter for the Washington Post who's specialty was baseball. The book came out in 1984 but some of the passages could be written today including this one. “in contrast to the unwieldy world which we hold in common, baseball offers a kingdom built to human scale. Its problems and questions are exactly our size. Here we may come when we feel a need for a rooted point of reference” And even with all of the changes to the game over the last few years I think he's still right. If George Wright who played for the original pro baseball team, The Cincinnati Red Stockings, in 1869, were teleported to 2019, he would still recognize the game. Major changes have happened of course, but it is still a game that was played 150 years ago. Boswell also had this observation, “Born to an age where horror has become commonplace , where tragedy has, by its monotonous repetition, become a parody of sorrow, we need to fence off a few parks where humans try to be fair, where skill has some hope of reward, where absurdity has a harder time than usual getting a ticket.” Let the games begin!
If you are looking for a great novel that includes baseball, time travel, romance and history check out “I'll Never Get Back” by Daryl Brock. It's really good.
And now of course, my yearly look at some great fictional baseball moments:
And, of course, the best baseball movie ever….yeah, I know that Hollywood changed the ending of the book but who cares!
Songs Of The Day
