Opening Day of baseball.
The neighborhood is alive with summer sounds. It’s lunchtime. I’m sipping my lunch from a tin can.
A few streets over, I hear kids’ voices. Their far-off laughter is infectious. I know they’re playing catch because I hear the rhythmic slaps of leather. Like a metronome.
And I’m thinking about the innumerable evenings my father and I played catch. Catch was our thing. We played whenever the mood hit.
Daddy never went anywhere without our ball gloves in the backseat. We played catch in all kinds of places. In public parks. In driveways. Backyards. In the church parking lot, during the sermon.
Some men’s fathers were Methodists or Presbyterians. My father was a National League man.
Which is why I am on the front porch, listening to dad’s old Zenith console radio. Tweed speaker. Particle-wood cabinet. The game sounds like it’s coming out of a walkie talkie, courtesy of 690 AM. Joe Simpson is in good voice today.
As each year goes by, baseball gets harder to love. The salaries get higher. The game gets more commercial. I keep getting older; the players stay the same age.
The sport of my youth no longer resembles itself. When I was a kid, professional baseball was played by guys who looked like beer-swilling lumberjacks and retired war veterans.
Bucky Dent was the man. Dale Murphy was a diety. You had guys like George Brett, with cheeks full of Red Man, rushing the mound after an inside pitch to beat the pitcher’s everlasting aspirations.
We had Ripken. Nolan. Sid Bream. And it wasn’t a game unless Bobby Cox made a serious attempt to decapitate an umpire.
Baseball has new rules now. The worst corruption to the game is the clock. My father would roll in his grave.
During my youth, there was no game clock in baseball. In fact, baseball was the only thing in life without a clock. Other sports had clocks. Your whole life had a clock. You punched a clock at work. Classroom had clocks.
But baseball was off the clock. You’d eat a hotdog, your pa swilled some Pabst, half the ballpark chain-smoked cigars. Time did not exist.
Still, I remain a fan. Baseball is my touchstone. It’s always been there. Like a beloved uncle. Or the old creek bridge. Or your favorite Norman Rockwell piece.
I don’t even care who wins anymore, just throw the dang ball.
My father was our Little League coach. He was a devout man. He prayed before every game. He’d spit out his Beech-Nut, set down his beer, and tell us to bow our sweaty little heads.
“Dear God,” my father would pray, “help the other team not be too embarrassed when we kick the crapola out of them…”
I was not allowed to play football because we were Baptist and Mama said football was communism. I didn’t play basketball because I was chubby and resembled the spokesperson for Pillsbury.
But chubby boys could play baseball.
And baseball made you feel good. That was its major selling point.
When your homelife was a wreck; when you were having a bad day; when your teacher brought you to her desk and told you that you had failed fifth grade because they didn’t have words for “dyslexia” back then, you always had baseball.
Baseball was there for me when my father died. That year the Braves had Smoltz, Maddux, and Glavine. The Holy Trinity. They weren’t just pitchers, they were real men who ate roofing tacks for breakfast. Men who were often invited to weddings to change the water into merlot.
Baseball was there during my teen years. It was there after every breakup. After every low moment. After every tragedy.
I remember watching the World Series after 9/11 happened. The U.S. president walked to the mound, before 46,537 roaring fans, and he threw the opening pitch like he knew what he was doing. I’ve never felt more American.
You never saw the Queen of England painting the corners of the strike zone.
Baseball has been there for me recently, too. Last year, I lost six friends to cancer. Six. And last summer, when doctors thought I had stomach cancer; when I quit eating; when I wasn’t sleeping; when I lost 30 pounds from stress, the Braves still played every night. And I still watched them.
And when the doctor called to say my scans came back clear, that I was cancer free, guess where I was standing when I received the good news? I was in Truist Park, at a Braves game, waiting in line for a $25.99 beer. I broke down and cried.
“Are you okay?” a random guy asked me.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I just really love baseball.”
“Wow,” he said. “I’ve never met anyone who loved baseball THAT much.”
Clearly he never met my father.
I wasn't good at baseball when I was a kid. It's hard to play catch when your brother is three years younger than you and your dad is working on the farm and teaching. When I became a father I was playing pitch with my sons when they were just out of diapers. I was asked how my boys got so good at baseball and I told them we played catch. I learned about their day, how things were going in school. You can' imagine all you can learn from your kids playing catch. When they started playing little league there was always a parent who asked how they got to catch the ball so well. I would tell them I played catch with them almost every day. I told them you have to take time with them and play catch. Your arm will give out before theirs will but you will learn so much about them.
You got me again, Sean. Good column.
My Mom was a baseball FAN. Her favorite team was her Red Legs. And they were HER Red Legs, and she never ever said the Cincinnati team’s name by shortening it like they always did, and still do. When my little sister was born on the 4th of July, the game was being broadcast in the hospital. In those days they routinely put the mothers to sleep. She was infuriated that they were putting her out when the game wasn’t over. When she came out of it she was as curious about the score as she was whether it was a boy or girl.
I have always been sports-impaired. I can’t play and often I can’t figure out what happened when some rule or other gets broken, or not, and this nuance becomes the topic of conversation for weeks, sometimes years. I was always last to be chosen up for teams. This did not warp me. I wouldn’t have picked me either. I had other strengths and got my rewards in other ways. My papers were always taped to the walls as the “example” of how to do the writing, math, or spelling.
But my Mom loved her Red Legs. One year, about 4th grade, the team started a thing where if a kid got straight A’s in the winter quarter (before the season started), they would win 4 tickets for each of 4 home games that summer. I got a lot of A’s, maybe a B would show up on my report card now and then and it was purely and admittedly a matter of focus. I got A’s in that winter quarter, all A’s and did so for every winter quarter through high school. It was a thing I did for my Mom. It made me feel like a lottery winner.
Mom never queried why I couldn’t (didn’t) get all A’s every quarter. She knew. She took the gift as presented. It was so fun going to the park and eating a hotdog as long as my forearm and a soda in a half gallon cup. Dad would wave a bill and a peace sign (indicating 2) to the man who called, “Beer here!” What fun. The sun was shining or if it rained it became part of the adventure. Mom would always say, dripping wet, “Luckily we’re not made of sugar. If we were we’d be all sticky.”
Mom took off work and stood in line all day to score World Series tickets for herself, my sister, and I in 1975. Dad had to work and the tickets were spendy. He wasn’t sports-impaired, he just wasn’t that interested. We played hooky that day. Mom said a World Series game for your team was an important life experience. She also bought tickets for me and several of my friends in college (I think there were a half dozen or so of us) to the game that was post-finals, 2 days before my graduation and commissioning. She informed us all that it was to be the game where Pete Rose (a.k.a. Charlie Hustle and a hometown hero) would make his 3000th hit. “How do you know he’s going to get it this game, Mom?”
She gave me an “oh to have a sports-impaired child” look and said, “He’ll get it. It’s Pete Rose, and this is a graduation present.” Well, all right then. He got it. It was amazingly exciting. Even I (as a sports-impaired person) could see what a tremendously big deal this was. It was also fun because my friends and I were old enough to hold up our own bills when the guy came down shouting “Beer here!”
Happy Opening Day!