TheBanyanTree: Opening Day

[Mike Pingleton]

Opening Day.  Nothing like it.  Spring is full of hope and promise.  This
spring, like the last forty springs, I have been ardently waiting for
Opening Day.

Boxing has been described as 'the sweet science'.  I've heard that for most
of my life, and thought, no it isn't.  Baseball is.  Baseball is the sweet
science.  Baseball, the perfect marriage of probability, physics, and
physical abilities.  The curveball that doesn't curve and meets thirty
ounces of ash, reversing directions in some small part of a second.  The
shortstop leaving his feet in a desparate diving attempt to snare a cowhide
sphere in his cowhide glove.  The double off the wall,  the runner making a
circle of a diamond, the third base coach windmilling his arm, the perfect
peg to the plate, a foot high, with no hop.  Thirty thousand souls come to
a complete stop, slopping five dollar beers, as player and pellet converge
at the plate...

Each pitch a tangled skein of probability, the pitcher a probability
machine.  Get the sign.  What to throw?  Curveball.  Fastball.  Slider,
changeup.  Inside?  Outside?  Who's on deck?  Who's on first?  The
probability machine cranks back, back.  The batter waits, steely-eyed, a
grim coiled spring hoping to put a stamp on the moment unfolding.  Back,
cranks the pitcher, leg in the air, arm hand and ball reaching almost to
the ground.  Another quarter second and the human catapult will release,
will explode, will whip around and fling a baseball sixty feet and three
inches.  What sound will follow the deadly hiss of a
ninety-five-mile-an-hour fastball?  The crack of a bat?  The pop of a
catcher's mitt?

It is difficult to describe the love I have for this game.  If you've ever
swung a bat and connected solidly with a pitch, turning the ball into a
vanishing point in a blue sky, you probably understand.  If you've learned
how to throw a curve ball or ever caught a line drive on the run, you know
what I mean.  Playing the game connects you, can bind you with all
baseball.  And each spring the memories of youth come tumbling to the fore.
 Playing catch with my father.  Pickup games with my brothers and friends.
Muscles recall a dim memory of the way it feels to swing a bat and connect
with that little white ball with the red stitches.

Play Ball!