Spring Break in Four Words

Pitchers and Catchers Report!  There may be many a sweeter verse in the English language, but none more pertinent at this time of the year.  Yes, the annual rites of spring and the coming baseball season are making its way through our culture once again… a sure sign that there is a God.  It is the quintessential American experience and recreational diversion in a world filled with financial, political and spiritual upheaval.

Not that we haven’t been entertained and sidetracked through the winter by football, Tebow and the Republican debates.  More recently, a global tidal wave has surrounded another young, Christian athlete –Jeremy Lin-- who has taken the basketball world by storm.  And it’s a much bigger storm in China. The Lin story has been wonderful with its unlikely component of an Asian kid from Harvard getting his chance to shine brightly on the big stage of the Big Apple with the New York Knicks being the last stop before oblivion.  While Tebow at least has a stellar college career, Lin emerged from total obscurity to forge a commendable run in his point guard role.  More importantly to me was the timing of Lin’s ascent, who was thrust into the spotlight to fill the slow-news sports gap between the Super Bowl  and those four glorious words appearing in sports sections and on the lips of sports reporters around the country.  The world may need love, sweet love, and look to Lin but it needs the return of baseball more.  Can I get an Amen?

But don’t take my word for it.  A noted French born American historian, named Jacques Barzun has what might be the best, most comprehensive quote ever attributed to the game; "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball....” 

Noted political pundit, intellectual and rabid baseball fan George Will was asked on his Sunday political roundtable what movie will win Best Picture.  As a man who is highly paid to give opinions, he responded as one might expect with this year’s crop of nominees… His pick was the only film he “actually understood” (his quote) – and that was Moneyball, which he saw four times, because “what else is on TV… until the real games begin”.  In terms of art imitating life, Hollywood has always been enthralled with the sport of baseball and its visceral beauty and simple quality.  Its film history would be household names (Pride of the Yankees, Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, and The Natural).  Even it’s ballparks are legendary – Chicago’s Wrigley Field, Boston’s Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium, “the House that Ruth built”  (until the new one opened a few years back).  No other sport conjures up descriptions of sports stadiums as cathedrals… hence the religious overtones of this great sport.

Will hasn’t been the lone scholarly voice espousing the cerebral underpinnings of the game.  Bart Giamatti was the president of Yale before being appointed to the post of Baseball Commissioner.  Critics were aghast!  Giamatti explained it away by saying, "There are a lot of people who know me who can't understand for the life of them why I would go to work on something as unserious as baseball. If they only knew."  

Therein also lies its beauty... it appeals to the intelligent, the affluent, the poor, the foreigner and the average Joe.  Giamatti as a college president certainly had a way with words and waxed poetic during his Ivy League tenure expressing this sentiment about baseball which still resonates today as a connection to American life:  “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."  We in Southern California may not relate to ‘chill rains’ in the form of weather but we all share in the flawed human condition often enough to grasp the magnitude of that vision.

The game also derives its richness from one of our most influential and important human relationships –that of a father and son. Playing catch with Dad becomes a rite of passage from toddler status to “kid”.  Who can forget picking out their first baseball glove, that first bat and donning that cap with the rolled brim and attending that first big league game?  Like a Norman Rockwell vision, many of our earliest memories of growing up revolve around those activities. 

This is not to suggest that our fair-maiden gender be excluded… not by a long shot. My mother is 91 years old, lives in Philadelphia and every time I speak with her between November and February she never fails to convey her impatience for the season to begin so she can watch her beloved Phillies. During the season our phone calls begin with three questions; “How’s the weather,” What time is it out there?” and “How ’bout those Phillies?”  Is there a better way to spend 6+ months of the year than watching our national pastime in your 90’s?  

Not to be outdone, my wife Angela has also joined the baseball bandwagon. We spend many spring and summer nights captivated by the golden voice of Vin Scully over the TV and radio airwaves or in attendance at Dodger games (yes we still are among the shrinking legions of fans interspersed throughout the park).  She can even recite the sacred four words that are bound to ignite a growing bond between us.  Equipped with this new found jargon and love for the Dodgers, she has spearheaded a trip to Arizona this month to wallow in the leisure of life’s simplicity that is spring training.

The good news, or so I’m told, is that there must be baseball in Heaven. I just hope I’m not pitching anytime soon. The advent of pitchers and catchers reporting is a little like Heaven on earth.