The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

This year has been challenging to a lot of us, for many reasons.  The economy, fear over employment, nonstop worry over issues so large that they seem beyond repair.  A country that is at the crossroads...and no one seems to have the answer of which was to turn.  I often think about a line from the best baseball movie ever during this times, "Field of Dreams:"

"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time."

This past year has been very challenging for me as well, in many ways.  The 2009 MLB season marks the first time in over a decade and a half that I haven't been intimately involved, somehow, with the game.  I was able to be a true fan for the first time and many moons.  The game reintroduced itself to me in all her fury.  She's the most heartless of mistresses, baseball.  One minute you feel on top of the world, everything is right.  Everything is good.  The next minute you are lonely, lost, confused and don't know where to turn.

Baseball brings you to the highest of highs and lowest of lows. 

The one constant in my crazy life over the past seven to eight months has been baseball, just as Terrence Mann said in his stirring speech to Ray Kinsella.  I would rely on her.  I would lean on her.  I knew that regardless of the day I was having I would be able to turn on the TV and some point that day and be instantly sucked into the chess match on the field.  I would hear the pop of the ball hitting a glove, the crack of a bat.  The roar of the crowd.

All sounds, for the first time in over 15 years, I wasn't hearing live.  That impacted me more than I ever thought it would.  I felt like a part of me was missing.  Watching the game would calm that feeling.  Knowing that there would be another to watch tomorrow would help when today's game ended.

The Yankees swarmed the field last night, celebrating another World Title.  It was getting very late, my eyes heavy.  I knew that my alarm was going to rage at 6:00 am, mere hours away, ready or not.  As the minutes ticked away I found myself not able to turn off the television.  Because when I did, when the TV screen faded to black, so would the 2009 MLB season.

There will be no game to calm my nerves tonight. 

Baseball is a cold mistress, indeed.  One minute 50,000+ people are on their feet screaming.  There is a game to be played.  There are pitches to be made, balls to be hit, pop flies to be chased down and bases to be run.  And then...suddenly...quickly...

There just isn't any more.

Sometimes during my MLB wrap up I will talk about great moments of the year.  It occurred to me this year that I am not really doing the game justice by focusing on individual accomplishments.  In a game of chess one wrong move early in the match often results in checkmate.  Often, without even understanding it until far later into the season, a team will realize that their entire season came down to one inspired, or fateful play.  That play rarely was on the shoulders of one individual player.  The pitch, where the pitch was supposed to be, the placement of the hit, the defensive alignment, the throw, the catch, the stretch...

This year I will simply say that I am going to miss turning on the television to watch baseball.  I will miss watching two teams jockeying for position.  The pop of the ball hitting the glove...the crack of the bat...the roar of the crowd.

This time of year I talk a lot about empty stadiums.  I'd like to share a quick story.  A handful of years ago, in the dead of winter, I had to be in Boston for a work meeting.  The meeting ended sooner than expected due to a massive snow storm in the area, everyone needed to get home.  I should have gotten on the road myself but I made a detour to Fenway.  Saw a couple people I know, took a stroll down the concourse.  Even in the dead of winter I could smell the stale beer and old hot dogs.  I could almost smell...summer.

I walked down the field.  I don't know why, but I trudged into the snow and walked to the pitcher's mound.  Smart move, my wife was thrilled that I did that in shoes that she had purchased for me for Christmas.  I stood on the mound, or as close to where I thought it was under all that snow, and looked around. 

"Stings, doesn't it?" - a voice from the visitor's dug out.  I glanced over.  I couldn't see the person's face, it was snowing too hard.  "Excuse me?" I asked. 

"It stings, right?  Summer seems so far away."

I nodded at the man.  "You know...it does.  Good word.  It stings."

The man kicked at some snow at his feet.  "The amazing thing about time is that it doesn't stop.  Blink and it'll be opening day.  You'll see."

With that, he left.  He was right.  I blinked, it seemed, and it was opening day.

It stings today. 

February 19, 2010.  Pitchers and catchers report.  Maybe, if I blink enough, the day will come soon.

Congratulations to the defending champion, Philadelphia Phillies.  You put up a fight against a machine that was not to be defeated.  But you did yourself, and your city, proud.

Congratulations to the New York Yankees, champions of my beloved Major League Baseball. 

February 19, 2010.

For the first time I am including a piece of the following work that I have never included before.  This year, for the first time, it's appropriate to share more of these wonderful words.  Enjoy.

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.

That is why it breaks my heart, that game--not because in New York they could win because Boston lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and a reminder to the Yankees of how slight and fragile are the circumstances that exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.


From A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett

“People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

Rogers Hornsby