FORGET THE RESURECTION, HOPE LIVES--Baseball's Back!
"Let's play two!"--Ernie Banks
I believe I have mentioned here before that it has been a hell of a winter. Here in McHenry County we were pounded by snow storm after snow storm that left as buried almost continually from December to March-I think there were 2 or 3 melt offs only to be followed by ever more impressive storms. I believe that the 3 soggy inches we got last Friday may have pushed us over the a total of 80 inches for the winter, hands down a new, if unofficial, record.
Although I’ve spied a few brave crocus here and there, the very hint of leaf buds on the odd maple, and the red, red robins have finally taken to bob, bob, bobbing along the sodden ground, I don’t think any of us have given up the nagging feeling that a half foot of the white stuff may yet plop down on our driveways at any time
It’s been miserable. And it hasn’t just been the weather.
The economy has gotten worse by the day. Houses down the street, modest homes for modest people, a sprouting for sale signs like mushrooms over old tree roots. So are some of the McMansions that dotted former corn fields near by during the building boom on steroids of the late ‘90’s and early ‘00’s. Gasoline and food prices have shot up. Wages have stagnated. Jobs have dried up and blown away. Just about everyone has been singed, many have succumbed to the conflagration, other live in terror that they are next.
The war drags on. Bitter new milestones are reached and noted. Some times it seems to fade away, only to come roaring back, as it has this week, with increasing ferocity.
Even the political campaign, which engaged our hope that there could be change, has dragged on to become a meat grinder of mutually assured destruction.
Surely this was the winter of our discontent.
Well Monday a kind of relief finally came. Baseball’s back! Oh, I know it is shallow, but just to have something else to think about, a new adventure on a blank page, has brightened my day as late arriving song birds and struggling flora have so far been unable to do.
It was miserable and wet at Wrigley Field. The game was late in starting and then there was a long rain delay. I got home from work and flipped on the Tube. I was surprised to find the game still in the 6th inning, the Cubs and Brewers locked in a pitcher’s duel and scoreless tie. Cub’s ace Carlos Zambrano was mowing ‘em down. But then so was the Brewers’ Ben Sheetz. Zambrano raced in to pick up an infield pop-up, narrowly missing a collision with First Baseman Derrick Lee. A few pitches later he twirled on the mound and fired to second base picking off a straying Brewer runner. And then his hand cramped and he had to come out of the game.
Kerry Wood, the once bright hope of the Cubs rotation and the source of much agonizing uncertainty in recent years, came in as the anointed new closer after a nearly flawless spring training, and promptly gave up three runs.
Just when the crowd at the ball park and one old man in a recliner in Crystal Lake were about to give up hope-Bam! Kosuke Fukudome, the Japanese star who became the Cub’s Great Yellow Hope, belted a line drive, three run homer tying the game. Delirium.
A Brewer sacrifice fly to center field in the 10th inning ended the game. A loss maybe, but a thrilling game.
No, this isn’t becoming a sports blog. I know a lot of serious, high minded folks who read this Blog can’t be bothered with baseball. Bread and circuses and all of that. A 21st Century opiate for the befuddled masses too satiated with entertainment to get their asses off the couch and DO SOMETHING! I know, I know.
But give me a break. It’s baseball. It’s the Cub’s. It’s a pennant drive. A pretty good team in a weak division. Every chance in the world to get into the Big Dance come October. After all, it’s been 100 years.
And to make it even better, before the game they uncovered a bronze statue to Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks. He is caught bat held high, eye on the ball about to go into that famously smooth swing, and step towards 1st as a long ball sails into the bleachers. Just the way I saw him that first magical year of my own baseball life in the summer of ’69.
“Baseball,” he said grinning