The Thaw of the Game

Aluminum Bats and Frozen Bums

Baseball is here. I can hear the rhythm of leather and the crack of wood. When I was a kid, baseball was predominant.

Miss C, my favorite teacher in junior high school loved poetry and never failed to read a poem at the start of every English class. One day, she read Casey at the Bat, and I was enthralled. Well, at baseline, I was enthralled with her. Casey was added value.

Rick Busciglio does a great reading here . . .

Rick . . .

I was captured by the poem and felt part of the Mudville crowd . . . ten thousand eyes and five thousand tongues . . . cheering The Man, Casey.

Like my favorite player, Ted Williams, Casey was a Goliath, and he had to succeed. There was nothing else but winning. My excitement turned to shock when Miss C read, But there is no joy in Mudville, mighty Casey has struck out. My gluteal muscles contracted as I jumped in my seat breathless, “He struck out?!

“Yes, Edward, he struck out. Calm down.” I loved her.

And so, now in late winter, though March madness is just underway, the Celtics and Bruins are still playing, and the Boston Marathon is a bit in the distance, thoughts of baseball creep into my head.

I have to add my recent piece, “A Piece of the Park” in RI News Today

I remember summers at the Rhode Island shore with my dad hunched over the radio, attached to his losing Red Sox. He was a lone Sox fan as most of hius friends loved the Yankees. So, Dad heard the Sox drown year after year.

Spring feels closer today. I’ve seen the early blooms of crocuses, and I’m anticipating the pop of blossoms.

In the springs of my youth, the mitts and bats stored in the cellar would awaken like sleeping bears, frogs and baby chicks.

Away went the heavy coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. We spent hours outside, taped old balls, rubbed new ones, Neatsfoot oiled our gloves. We played catch and took some batting practice, toting an old bat with a nail driven into the sweet spot for the “pop.”

Courtesy of RI News Today

Not all baseball springs were easy. When my children were playing, my Dad and I watched many a game in frigid temperatures. Clad in winter coats and heavy gloves, we often hustled back to the car to turn on the engine and thaw. The cold aluminum stands had the same physical properties as the new aluminum bats; one stung hands, the other bums.

The knock of the wooden bat was now the ring of metal, and a high-pitched ping it was. Feeling bad for the players and a little guilty (not much) for warming ourselves, we eventually returned to sit on those cold stands or stand behind the home plate fence.

I can still see the players.

The first baseman was wearing a hooded sweatshirt under his uniform. The second baseman wore a toque and a windbreaker. The guy at third had a heavy sweater. The batters swung as if they needed grease. The pitcher blew into his hand. The outfielders were jumping up and down.

A Gemini generated cartoon

The coaches wore mittens and clapped a lot. “Hurry up, Kid! Throw the ball,” barked the shivering umpire. “We gotta get outta here. Strike! Close enough.”

So what if we sat on cold bleachers, swinging our arms to keep warm or running back to the warm car. No matter. Dad and I were back on a ball field watching the kids in the spring of our lives. Together.

Baseball seems to wake everything in nature … trees, grasses, flowers, animals, players, fans … from the long sleep of winter.

As Milton Bracker wrote in his poem,

Tomorrow!

And tossing the ball out
And yelling Play Ball!
(Who cares about fall-out-
At least, until fall?)

Let nothing sour
This sweetest hour;
The baseball season’s
Back in flower!

Get out those gloves and bats! Play ball! The right of spring means allegiance,

To the game

To the kids

To our memories

To Dad . . .

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