They say no other sport has "purists" like baseball. They say our fans are set in our ways; caring about guys who arguably would barely sniff the minor leagues today, claiming they're the best to have ever played the game. They say football -- a sport that is no doubt in its golden age -- has shoved our national pastime aside and stolen its title.
But ESPN, Peter King, the people of Green Bay, those weirdos who dress as women at Redskins games...they will NEVER have what we have. Players who withstood unimaginable hatred so that minority athletes like Kobe Bryant, Gary Sheffield, Ray Lewis -- can all play today. A man who, in the prime of his career, brought a place simply known as "The Stadium" to tears when he told the world he was the luckiest man on the face of the Earth, even as his crumbling body deteriorated by a disease with his namesake.
Or in movies, when grown men call their dad to have maybe just one more game of catch after Ray Kinsella confronts his father -- a member of the disgraced 1919 Chicago Black Sox -- in Field of Dreams. A dream so real that people plan vacations, even today, to the very spot of the movie, just to stand on the field and experience what this game means.
So today when I looked at the Major League Baseball website and saw the first list of games of 2009 on the left of the screen -- when my eyes began to well -- I knew it was the right day to really voice my feelings.
Ask yourself. When does the NFL open training camps? When do NBA teams begin practice? Heck, when does the NBA season even begin...and what kind of pomp and circumstance does the NFL give us for the first game of the season?
Baseball gives us Spring Training. A time when Americans say goodbye to the long, cold winter and prepare for another year of ballparks, sun and the potential for unforgettable moments. It gives us Opening Day.
Think back. Will football, hockey, basketball...anything...will any of these give you Cal Ripken, Jr. enduring over 15 minutes of applause by people like then-President and Vice-President Bill Clinton and Al Gore after suiting up and starting his 2,131st consecutive game? And even though they are no longer seen as heroes, you need not say anything but "McGwire and Sosa" for the world to know you are talking about the fantasy season of 1998.
Baseball is America. It's -- as James Earl Jones tells us -- the only constant. It's more than a game -- the only sport with cathedrals like Wrigley, Fenway and (until last year) Yankee Stadium. With hallowed ground in a small upstate town in New York. With faces of the game who haven't played in 50 years. It's baseball.
And for the next 8 months -- it's HERE.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
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