Bit Bucket

…is a baseball game. Not because baseball in winter is appealing, especially when it’s in the 20s outside.  But rather, because after this offseason, I just want the speculation about the various teams to stop.  That’s the worst part of the off-season.

I love the excitement of the winter meetings, and the rumors swirling, and deals being made, but damned if I cannot stand the armchair GMing that happens right afterward, and on through the start of spring training.  Much of what gets said during the season is more cautious, because it must be backed up on the field, but when there are no games on this week’s schedule it’s easy to say that we got ripped off for Alex Cora, and isn’t Jerry Hairston dead? 

That is the most tedious time of the season.  It’s before pitchers and catchers report (we’re down to 24 days!), but also before columnists have published their pre-spring training features.

What I want right now is 9 men on the field, another 16 in the dugout and bullpen, and two solid weeks of home and road games.

But we’ll have to wait until April for that.

If Baseball were to have a poet laureate, it would be W.P. Kinsella, who wrote Shoeless Joe and The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and many, many short stories about the game. There is one phrase of his that I come back to over and over again is “The Thrill of the Grass,” which evokes a pastoral feel, a traditional joy that is timeless and holy.

I’ve read more in the last five years about the pastoral ideal, technology and politics than I could recount here successfully, but it’s a common element in a number of issues that we see throughout various philosophies.  There’s something lovely and simple about  the game of baseball.  It doesn’t tear up a field, the same way that football or rugby does.  It doesn’t require too much in the way of decoration, other than the foul lines.  Just a clean expanse of short green grass.

This is what I dream about when the days are short and the weather cold.  I look at my own lawn, its color brown and dingy, its scraggly remaindered grass in hibernation for the winter.  I dream about the grass that is mine, green and healthy, recently cut and of a polite height and density.  I dream of that thrilling smell of cut grass and its softness under my feet.  

When the forecast calls for snow on Tuesday, and while I’ll be wearing a heavy coat, an extra sweater and warm socks tomorrow for my trips into the world, I’ll be smelling that grass, feeling that sunshine warm and strong on my face, and hearing the solid THWAK of the rock heading to the glove.

We wait in joyful hope.

There’s a special place in every stadium.  It’s not the ticket plaza, or the box office, or the concession stand.  It’s not the steps to the dugout, or the doorway to the press box. It’s the hallway that leads you out to the lower bowl.  In that hallway, so much is promised to you, so much given to you in smell and sight and sound.  

I remember the first time I saw that hallway at Nationals Park was during the Great Flush Test in February of 2008.  Walking down that hall toward the outfield corner was like walking into the narthex of a church.  You get this feeling of wonderful calm and peace, and you understand what the place means.  This is holy ground.

I wait in joyful hope for the coming of the season.

My friend Lisa, who is smarter than I am, started me down this path a few years ago when she suggested that the 40 days before Pitchers and Catchers was, in fact, the Lent of Baseball.  When we meditate on what it means to play the game, to watch the game, to score the game, to coach the game, to write about the game we all love and adore.  I love baseball the way a lot of people love God, or Jesus, or Buddha, or Mohammed: with casual fervor that approaches fixation.

I have no doubt that the sport of Baseball, and the Oakland Athletics of 1988 through 1994, preserved my family.  From Opening Day, to the last out of the World Series, Baseball gave us something to enjoy that was out of space and time.  It gave us something tangible to cling to, gave us something to dream about, to imagine in wholeness, when things outside of it were tattered and torn, in disarray.

So yes, I celebrate Baseball’s Lent, for what it means to me and my family, as the rebirth of something wonderful, something full of the possible.  And for each of the next 39 days, I will share something of my love of the game, and with luck, teach you that it’s something wonderful.

If you’d like to do the same, just tag your post with The Lent of Baseball. 40 days til the beginning of Spring, the end of Winter, and the return of the pastime we share as Americans.