I (heart) baseball

This is it – the best day of the year. Baseball is finally here again.

Sure we’ve had those couple of games in Japan and that affair last night in Washington D.C.. For most of us though, today was the real opening day – a day when we’re saved from the tedious boredom of winter and spring blossoms on diamonds across the country.

And so, for the next six months, The Wife will become a baseball widow. It’s not my fault, that’s the way baseball works. With the day-in, day-out schedule, it becomes a part of your everyday routine – a time each day when you can turn on the radio or television and block out all of the various quibbles in your life. It becomes so much a part of one’s daily routine that somewhere around late August, you begin to take it for granted. When it’s all yanked away from suddenly in November, it makes the world seem that much colder and gray.

It’s not always a perfect game. It’s not always an honest game. But it’s a game that can be shared across continents and generations with a reverence and understanding that doesn’t need words. It’s the game you played as a child and the same game that kids around the world played as well.

I can pick up a box score from 1908 and picture the game in my mind as clearly as if it had happened today. There have been changes – some more sweeping than others – but baseball by and large remains the same game. You could take a person from any point in the 20th century, drop them into the crowd at a game today and they could follow the game without any problems.

Its beauty is found in its simplicity, but its complexity makes it compelling. The rules and strategy change according to the venue and rivalries span not seasons or decades, but multiple generations. The players and the teams and the locations may change, but baseball – the game itself – remains the same.

Pitches are being thrown, the air is cracking with the sound of squarely hit balls and the Astros just lost in a particularly pathetic fashion. Yes, baseball is back and everything is the better for it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be occupied until November.