Baseball Opening Day 2019
OPENING DAY
There’s a beautiful poetry to the opening day of the baseball season. One of the reasons I hated opening a week early, in Japan, in the middle of the night, is that Baseball symbolizes so much of the mythology of The American Summer. Not starting all together, 30 teams in fifteen lucky cities, all over the country, is a great loss. Not necessarily because the memories evoked were ever really true: maybe none of it was true, but we imagine that it was, and we want to go back.
Like a Norman Rockwell painting that evokes yesterdays that never happened, so too does the opening day of baseball bring to mind the carefree memories of our mythological childhood, where it was never too hot, there was always a swimming hole nearby, and there were no mosquitoes. We miss those days.
But it also brings back real memories of things that really happened, and the real mixes with the fable and we miss them all.
I remember being confused that my father still got up in the morning and went to work. He should have relaxed like his five boys, because “it’s summer.” I didn’t understand then that the freedom only applied to us children, and only for a precious little while. My father never jumped on the trampoline or ran around the backyard barefoot. He mowed the lawn. Sometimes he snuck a nap on Saturday afternoon.
But he did take me to Rangers games, pausing his adult life long enough to share in my summer and reminisce about his own. I remember him getting a beer and winking at me as he did so, knowing that I would keep it secret from mom, and I remember his delight when we both stood up to participate in a wave. One of my dearest memories is a game the Rangers lost 9 to 8, to the White Sox, I think. They scored seven runs in the eighth inning, and everybody knew they would come back to tie and then to win, and they didn’t. The Rangers went 1 2 3 in the ninth, but that was OK. I was with Papa...and I can see him again, pounding his feet with the crowd, grinning at me all the while.
And opening day means it’s all back. Nobody has to go to work. Gas is cheap and taxes are low.
And it’s summer. Not yet. Not in New York or Boston or Minnesota, or even on the Calendar. It’s barely a week into Spring.
But if it’s baseball, it’s summer, and there are no mosquitoes, and Papa and I are cheering the hapless Rangers, and I won’t tell Mom about the beer.
And it’s opening day.
There’s a beautiful poetry to the opening day of the baseball season. One of the reasons I hated opening a week early, in Japan, in the middle of the night, is that Baseball symbolizes so much of the mythology of The American Summer. Not starting all together, 30 teams in fifteen lucky cities, all over the country, is a great loss. Not necessarily because the memories evoked were ever really true: maybe none of it was true, but we imagine that it was, and we want to go back.
Like a Norman Rockwell painting that evokes yesterdays that never happened, so too does the opening day of baseball bring to mind the carefree memories of our mythological childhood, where it was never too hot, there was always a swimming hole nearby, and there were no mosquitoes. We miss those days.
But it also brings back real memories of things that really happened, and the real mixes with the fable and we miss them all.
I remember being confused that my father still got up in the morning and went to work. He should have relaxed like his five boys, because “it’s summer.” I didn’t understand then that the freedom only applied to us children, and only for a precious little while. My father never jumped on the trampoline or ran around the backyard barefoot. He mowed the lawn. Sometimes he snuck a nap on Saturday afternoon.
But he did take me to Rangers games, pausing his adult life long enough to share in my summer and reminisce about his own. I remember him getting a beer and winking at me as he did so, knowing that I would keep it secret from mom, and I remember his delight when we both stood up to participate in a wave. One of my dearest memories is a game the Rangers lost 9 to 8, to the White Sox, I think. They scored seven runs in the eighth inning, and everybody knew they would come back to tie and then to win, and they didn’t. The Rangers went 1 2 3 in the ninth, but that was OK. I was with Papa...and I can see him again, pounding his feet with the crowd, grinning at me all the while.
And opening day means it’s all back. Nobody has to go to work. Gas is cheap and taxes are low.
And it’s summer. Not yet. Not in New York or Boston or Minnesota, or even on the Calendar. It’s barely a week into Spring.
But if it’s baseball, it’s summer, and there are no mosquitoes, and Papa and I are cheering the hapless Rangers, and I won’t tell Mom about the beer.
And it’s opening day.