The Agony and the Ecstasy
Ugh... the Mets' season is over. I'd like to say that I don't care, and that life goes on, but it's just not the truth. To be fair, I have lost interest in most sports that I used to be obsessed with as a youngster. I no longer watch the NFL, or the NBA, and I rarely follow hockey. I realize that I have other interests, and I enjoy pursuing them and feeling like I'm finally the well-rounded person that all colleges are looking for in 17-year-olds.
But baseball... baseball is different. There's so much history and feeling behind it. Tim sent me this poem a few weeks ago, and I fell in love with it. It's by A. Bartlett Giamatti, a former commissioner of Major League Baseball.
"The Green Fields of the Mind "
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.
Beautiful.
And so begins the long, hard winter, without the comfort of baseball. Although admittedly, in Tucson, the winter isn't very long (in fact it doesn't exist), and 70 degrees and sunny can't be classified as hard, but oh! Weep for the rest of the country, and all of Garrison Keillor's favorite states. I feel for you, north. But I hope that the warmth of a Detroit Tigers World Series Championship can carry that sad city through its coldest times.
For love, for heart, for baseball.
But baseball... baseball is different. There's so much history and feeling behind it. Tim sent me this poem a few weeks ago, and I fell in love with it. It's by A. Bartlett Giamatti, a former commissioner of Major League Baseball.
"The Green Fields of the Mind "
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.
Beautiful.
And so begins the long, hard winter, without the comfort of baseball. Although admittedly, in Tucson, the winter isn't very long (in fact it doesn't exist), and 70 degrees and sunny can't be classified as hard, but oh! Weep for the rest of the country, and all of Garrison Keillor's favorite states. I feel for you, north. But I hope that the warmth of a Detroit Tigers World Series Championship can carry that sad city through its coldest times.
For love, for heart, for baseball.
posted by GM | 18:24
1 Comments:
You expressed that so well. So many feel the same way. The sound of other sports in the background of life can sound frantic and chaotic, but baseball -- baseball is soothing. It is the perfect punctuation for a summer evening.
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