My recent birthday was a break in the action of living in which songs were sung and time for reflection on the game was provided. As my life enters the late innings it seems wise to consider how the game will end and how we got to this point in the contest.
As we age, ambition is replaced to some degree by humility and the rage to succeed morphs into a desire to help others. You can lift less weight, hike shorter distances and feel the aches and pains that have come with the game but your vision also clears and you play better defense. You will compete to the end and close without the need for relief pitching. It’s your game until the final out.
When I was very young, I listened to baseball games on a transistor radio that was safely cradled under my pillow. My imagination was nurtured by the theater of the mind …I reconstructed the game in mind only… couldn’t see the action but recreated it vividly. Almost smelled the grass, felt the sunshine, saw Nellie Fox send a stream of RedMan onto the perfectly groomed base path. In a way this exercise was the beginning of empathy as I imagined the feelings of players in tight situations.
As the game changed, I changed with it.
Writers from Walt Whitman to George Will, Kinsella and many others have presented the subtleties of baseball for decades. Whitman argued that baseball was “America’s Game” but it didn’t become that until 1947 when Jackie made it so. Yet, it is America’s game because it reflects our goods and bads so clearly. Baseball brings our racism, courage, cleverness, obstinacy into stark relief. I once owned a Roberto Clemente baseball card. On the reverse were his lifetime stats: .317 hitter, NL MVP, 18 years in the Bigs. The front of the card showed this great player above his name which was given as BOB…his Puero Rican heritage was sanitized for the white market. Josh Gibson spent years away from his true resting place…Cooperstown. We have come a long way since then.
I’ve come a long way, too.
I have seen enough innings to know that sometimes you win, sometimes you loose and sometimes it rains. I know excellence is not a matter of race. Baseball has been a passion, a metaphor and a means to understanding human nature. Finally, I agree with Garret Morris:
“Baseball have been berry berry good to me. .”
Olio Folio 