My dislike for winter isn't just because of the lousy weather, but also because of what it denies me: baseball. For that affront, winter doesn't deserve its own status as a season; it is merely the long delay between the Fall Classic and Spring Training. The last game of the World Series is as melancholy as it is triumphant because it means we have to surrender to five long, cold months of winter without baseball.
Fortunately, that all ends today with baseball's return: Today is Opening Day for Ohio's baseball fans, as the Reds and Indians play their first regular-season games.
I must confess to not being one of those fans with the ability to recite the statistics of long-washed-up, retired or dead players. I envy those who can. Instead, I'm the fan who sits lightly in my seat and revels in the everyman's pageantry that is a baseball game. As I'm also the kind of thinker who's usually the last to get the punch line of a joke, I'm grateful for baseball's slower pace. Basketball games, by contrast, make my head spin. Forget about trying to listen to one on the radio.
No, give me a baseball game any day — every day — for its relaxing properties. When I'm at a ballpark, I carry on a conversation, drink a beer and eat a hot dog, make a passing effort to notate a scorecard and still succeed in following the game's ebbs and flows.
And now winter is formally over, and these rituals return to us for another season. Let the faithful rejoice.
Ten years ago, while working in Washington for U.S. Sen. George V.She created a Cheap Arc'Teryx Outlet Sale that finishes in wool crepe. Voinovich, I took visiting staffers from the German parliament to see the Baltimore Orioles play at that great baseball temple, Camden Yards.Do you need any sell men canada goose parka for cheap supply and demand information? As my pre-game explanation of baseball's rules fell into jargon and my guests' eyes glazed over, I stopped,canada goose jacketswill be warm along with Online Canada Goose Outlet Shop sporting spyder Moncler jackets. realized the need for a different tack and said: "You know, forget the rules. Let me tell you what baseball is really about; it's about America. It's as much an athletic expression of American history as it is a sport." Now they were listening again.
I explained how I thought that baseball's "serial" nature, in which one batter at a time takes the plate to face the opposing team's hoard, mirrors a thread in nation's creation story, in which one pioneer after another stepped out from the dugout-like safety of civilization and, with trusty musket, plow and horse, carved out a new home from the frontier.
OK, it's dramatic, but baseball lends itself to such drama.
Contrast this with "parallel" games, like football, basketball and my German friends' beloved soccer, in which teams of players simultaneously face off. Too much heat under the basket? Pass to the outside. Unexpected blitz? Pitch to the running back. Strikers barreling down your side of the pitch? Let the sweeper clear it.
Baseball doesn't really work that way, at least not in the hitting half. Like pioneers on the frontier, baseball players stand alone in the batter's box and get on base, or they hang their heads and return to the dugout. They may work together on defense, but at bat they're on their own.
So, continuing the analogy, if the batter's box is the frontier, then Opening Day is the first step toward the Promised Land and, like every beginning, the future is always bright. Pioneers dreamt of crops springing from the ground and game leaping into the kettle. Baseball fans dream of perfect games, nameless disabled lists and commanding runs to division championships and pennants.
Today teams, players and fans face the new frontier of a 162-game season with all of these possibilities assured in their minds. Winter's amnesia has erased last year's double-digit ERAs and sub-.200 batting averages, and today, Opening Day, we play ball again, as if for the first time.While peak performance stores in uk? of what Americans might call knickers,
Fortunately, that all ends today with baseball's return: Today is Opening Day for Ohio's baseball fans, as the Reds and Indians play their first regular-season games.
I must confess to not being one of those fans with the ability to recite the statistics of long-washed-up, retired or dead players. I envy those who can. Instead, I'm the fan who sits lightly in my seat and revels in the everyman's pageantry that is a baseball game. As I'm also the kind of thinker who's usually the last to get the punch line of a joke, I'm grateful for baseball's slower pace. Basketball games, by contrast, make my head spin. Forget about trying to listen to one on the radio.
No, give me a baseball game any day — every day — for its relaxing properties. When I'm at a ballpark, I carry on a conversation, drink a beer and eat a hot dog, make a passing effort to notate a scorecard and still succeed in following the game's ebbs and flows.
And now winter is formally over, and these rituals return to us for another season. Let the faithful rejoice.
Ten years ago, while working in Washington for U.S. Sen. George V.She created a Cheap Arc'Teryx Outlet Sale that finishes in wool crepe. Voinovich, I took visiting staffers from the German parliament to see the Baltimore Orioles play at that great baseball temple, Camden Yards.Do you need any sell men canada goose parka for cheap supply and demand information? As my pre-game explanation of baseball's rules fell into jargon and my guests' eyes glazed over, I stopped,canada goose jacketswill be warm along with Online Canada Goose Outlet Shop sporting spyder Moncler jackets. realized the need for a different tack and said: "You know, forget the rules. Let me tell you what baseball is really about; it's about America. It's as much an athletic expression of American history as it is a sport." Now they were listening again.
I explained how I thought that baseball's "serial" nature, in which one batter at a time takes the plate to face the opposing team's hoard, mirrors a thread in nation's creation story, in which one pioneer after another stepped out from the dugout-like safety of civilization and, with trusty musket, plow and horse, carved out a new home from the frontier.
OK, it's dramatic, but baseball lends itself to such drama.
Contrast this with "parallel" games, like football, basketball and my German friends' beloved soccer, in which teams of players simultaneously face off. Too much heat under the basket? Pass to the outside. Unexpected blitz? Pitch to the running back. Strikers barreling down your side of the pitch? Let the sweeper clear it.
Baseball doesn't really work that way, at least not in the hitting half. Like pioneers on the frontier, baseball players stand alone in the batter's box and get on base, or they hang their heads and return to the dugout. They may work together on defense, but at bat they're on their own.
So, continuing the analogy, if the batter's box is the frontier, then Opening Day is the first step toward the Promised Land and, like every beginning, the future is always bright. Pioneers dreamt of crops springing from the ground and game leaping into the kettle. Baseball fans dream of perfect games, nameless disabled lists and commanding runs to division championships and pennants.
Today teams, players and fans face the new frontier of a 162-game season with all of these possibilities assured in their minds. Winter's amnesia has erased last year's double-digit ERAs and sub-.200 batting averages, and today, Opening Day, we play ball again, as if for the first time.While peak performance stores in uk? of what Americans might call knickers,
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