Apologies to my loyal readers - today’s story won’t be very sexy, but it’s from the heart.
As those of you who have followed me for a while already know, I love baseball. And today, as those of you to whom this means something already know, was the unofficial start of spring, the demarcation known by the four most beautiful words of winter: Pitchers and catchers report. Yes, my friends: Reds spring training has begun.
Okay, in fairness, spring training doesn’t actually being until Saturday, when position players are required to report to camp. The games don’t start until February 27th, the first of two against state rivals (and training complex compatriots) the Cleveland Indians. This year, unlike in years past, all spring training games will be broadcast on either the radio, or in the case of four games, on TV, whereas in years past, only weekend games were on the radio, and TV during spring training was unheard of. But the recent success of the team, coupled with the increased interest in the team from the bandwagon, means extra media coverage.
But that’s not what I came here to talk about.
My father (well, stepfather, but the closest thing I ever had to a father, and that’s another story entirely) died on October 10, 2009, a month after my wife left me. I buried him on October 14, five days before I met Lorelei. ”Earl,” as we’ll call him here, was a lifelong Reds fan, and someone I could talk baseball with for hours. The stories he had, from meeting Stan Musial to having one of his boyhood fights broken up by Pete Rose, Earl lived an amazing life; a life cut short by a drug interaction that led to a slow, painful death from a degenerative lung disease.
That’s not what I came here to talk about, either.
As I said, today was the first day of spring training, and the second spring training since Earl died. I’ll admit, last year was kind of a whirlwind, and the significance sort of passed me. As silly as it sounds, baseball helped me get through, as did Lorelei’s interest in watching the games with me. As I’d watch a home run fly off the bat, I’d feel my heart soaring with that five ounce ball. The swell of emotions from the team, gathered around home plate to welcome tonight’s hero, would swell in my own soul. Sorry, Tom: there is crying in baseball. The charge of every 100+ MPH pitch, including the record-smashing 105.1 MPH, delivered by rookie phenom Aroldis Chapman, the aptly-named Cuban Missile, surged through me. They all gave me focus. They gave me strength. They gave me hope.
They gave me a profound sorrow that I’d never see Earl again.
Earl would have loved last season’s Reds; much of what happened is what he and I predicted in those last few days of his life. We’d balk (no pun intended) at what we thought were wild assertions and just plain stupid ideas offered up by the local and national sports media, and talk for hours on end about lineup changes, proper grips for a changeup, and whether or not Murderer’s Row could outhit the Big Red Machine. As the Reds clinched their division last season, beneath the jubilation, I missed my friend. St. Louis Cardinals (et al) great Rogers Hornsby once said “People ask me what I do in the winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” And stare I did, and have hours of silent conversations in my head, wondering what Earl would think about this trade, or this potential move, or that contract offer.
So today, I went to his grave.
I’m not the type to believe in a life after this one, so I’m not really sure why I had to compulsion to visit him. I know it only helped me, but I felt the need to go, and leave a baseball on his headstone. I’m not really sure why I did that, either. The handing off of a ball is a somewhat meaningful gesture in baseball, and a pitcher will leave a ball on the mound for his adversary between innings. Maybe it meant something. Maybe it just made me feel better.
You see, spring training, which always takes place someplace warm, finds our heroes in the sun, on green fields, just where we left them. There’s a little magic in that - they only exist on the field. When you see baseball players in the off-season, they’re just people. They’re not baseball players. They’re not the heroes we remember from that field where the grass is always so unbelievably green, the dirt is so ridiculously red, and everyday brings new hope. It doesn’t matter what happened yesterday, or last year. It doesn’t matter how many games you’ve lost, or who.
Winter is our collective death of our souls, and spring is a new life reborn. Somewhere in a cemetery north of Cincinnati, Ohio, an old, worn out baseball sits on a small mound of earth, in a field that will soon be green and warmed by the spring sun, as the team that we all loved takes the field again.
Play ball.
