Baseball is the President tossing out the first ball of the season and a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm. A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout. That's baseball. And so is the big, fat guy with a bulbous nose running home one of his 714 home runs.
There's a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh forty-six years ago. That's baseball. So is the scout reporting that a sixteen year old pitcher in Cheyenne is a coming Walter Johnson. Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.
In baseball democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rulebook. Color merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another.
Baseball is a rookie. His experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream. It's a veteran too, a tired old man of thirty-five hoping that those aching muscles can pull him through another sweltering August and September. Nicknames are baseball, names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki andHome Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.
Baseball is the cool, clear eyes of Rogers Hornsby. The flashing spikes of Ty Cobb, an over aged pixie named Rabbit Maranville.
Baseball is just a game, as simple as a ball and bat, yet as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. A sport, a business and sometimes almost even a religion.
Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World's Series catch. And then dashing off to play stick ball in the street with his teenage pals. That's baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrigsaying., "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”
Baseball is cigar smoke, hot roasted peanuts, The Sporting News, ladies day, "Down in Front", Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and the Star Spangled Banner.
Baseball is a tongue tied kid from Georgia growing up to be an announcer and praising the Lord for showing him the way to Cooperstown. This is a game for America. Still a game for America, this baseball!
Here's a link to a video where you can hear Ernie give the speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cloU58N0YVI&feature=related
Baseball is probably my favorite sport professionally. Going to a baseball game is like almost nothing else in the professional sports world. If I could have season tickets to any sport, it would be baseball, and YES, I would indeed love to go to 81 baseball games each year. A baseball game is one of the few places where you can do and relax with friends for 7 innings, cheering when the situation calls for it, and follow the game while enjoying the social aspect, and then tune in for the last couple of innings when things really get exciting. Some people say that baseball is boring. How can it be boring when there is so much going on? I know, I know, "nothing ever happens" people say. Now maybe it's just the fact that I've played baseball all of my life and am pretty much an extreme stat-nerd, but the way I look at it there is ALWAYS something going on. To the average fan, the only pitches that matter are the ones that end in strikeouts and home runs. From my view (especially as a former pitcher) EVERY SINGLE PITCH is huge. A good pitcher uses every pitch purposefully, setting up the rest of the at-bat. A pitch that is made in the first inning might be done just to set up a different pitch 5 innings later.
There's so much strategy in baseball, and so much thinking that does (or should) go into every single pitch and every swing and every play in the field, that it can never be boring (at least to a sports nut like me). For that, and for the fact that everyone from a little kid throwing a plastic ball around, to a grandpa and grandma watching a game, baseball truly is a game that EVERYONE can enjoy.
So let's say hello to another season of our country's pastime...LET'S PLAY BALL!
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