“…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. …”
This is what baseball is all about. Baseball is America. If we have someone in office who does not understand that Baseball is America then
“Baseball is a game of race, creed, and color. The race is to first base. The creed is the rules of the game. The color? Well, the home team wears white uniforms, and the visiting team wears gray.”
-Joe Garagiola
It’s here.
I love Spring Training. It is a time when the world is young and anything is possible.
“There are only two seasons – winter and Baseball.”
-Bill Veeck
Up until I lost my grandparents about 15 years ago, from the time I could talk someone in to driving me over to the ball park, at least one week each year as spent in West Palm Beach, watching the Braves at Spring Training.
I grew up leaning over the dugouts, hanging on the fence, and sitting in the stands listening to the sounds of the birds, the distinct rustling of palm fronds, and the sound of a ball ricocheting off a bat in an empty stadium.
There is no other sound so exciting, so remarkable or so absolutely perfect, unless it is the sound a well pitched fast ball makes when it slams into a catcher’s mitt.
Spring Training is a time for people to hang out at the ball park, soak in some sun, and dream about endless possibilities.
“Whoever wants to learn the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game-and do it by watching first some high school or small town teams.”
– Jacques Barzun
Spring has sprung.
“Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It’s no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It’s a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.”
-Ty Cobb
The long winter is melting away to reveal the lush green of the diamond.
“Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as someone else but to be better than someone else. This is the nature of man and the name of the game.”
-Ted Williams
BASEBALL IS BACK!
As long as we have baseball, we can survive anything.
“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”
-A. Bartlett Giamatti
