Baseball: Proof That God Loves Us And Wants Us To Be Happy.

I know, I know, I’m playing with a Ben Franklin quote about beer, but times, change! Had baseball been around when Ben Franklin was air bathing and enjoying a brew, he’d agree with me.

I’m thinking about baseball because the gents over at Stones Cry Out are

giddy in anticipation and they’ve made me a little giddy, too, hence this link to Thomas Boswell’s brilliant article re Why baseball is better than football.

It inspires me to recite my early-springtime Pledge to Baseball, quoting A. Bart Giamatti, as I do every year:

Baseball breaks your heart. It’s designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything is new again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains comes, it stops, and leaves you to face the fall alone.

Ah, but it’s so sweet, that ache. Already I am impatient to hear the crack of a ball against a bat, to hear the swift, hot hisssss of a catcher’s mitt intercepting a 90mph pitch. I look forward to stepping into a local shop and hearing a radio in the background, with the windup, the pitch, the sharp pop and the crowd’s roar. I want to sit under a clear blue sky and hear the flags and banners snap in the breeze, and eat a hot dog, or maybe two, and stand up at the seventh inning and sing God Bless America, or Take Me Out to the Ballgame – they both mean the same thing to me! I want to raise my binoculars and take a good long look at Derek Jeter’s batting stance…or, really any stance he might choose to take! I want to boo a Red Sox player! I want to boo a Yankee who lets me down. I want to boo an umpire, too! I want to roll the unfamiliar names of players in this melting pot of a game on my tongue until they feel as natural as my teeth. Then I want to boo them, too! Until I cannot help but cheer!

And then I want to stand, transfixed as a ball soars over the wall. I want to lose my mind at the bottom of the ninth, when – with one out to go – a guy who badly needs a hit steps up to the plate and pulverizes the ball. I want to remember the thing that makes this game so incredibly distinctive, why – I suspect – President Bush loves it, as well: Because in baseball, every single pitch, every single turn at bat boils down to one, wonderful and exasperating thing: A man against the world. One man, facing an entire team of men, and prevailing. Oh, I love it. It’s so rich, so fraught with drama, so enticingly happy, so innocent and so glorious.

It’s so…so…American! :-)

Baseball: Proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.