"Baseball is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed, and the only one in which the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn…It is a haunted game in which every player is measured against the ghosts of all who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope - and coming home."
The above remark from historian Ken Burns explains, in short, the excitement felt at this time of the year by fans across the nation. The return of baseball to our lives is more than a mere representation of the arrival of the good weather and high spirits of spring. We will once again be able to walk across our beautiful campus and argue whether the Mets' pitching rotation measures up to that of last year. (It does.) Perhaps one might wonder if Chuck Knoblauch's throwing problems will disappear in left field, and if Alfonso Soriano will have what it takes to start in the major leagues over a full season.
While baseball lacks the pace of basketball or football, the game's many unique features help it retain its popularity. In addition, the rich history of baseball can keep conversation rolling for hours. Which player's record is safer, Cal Ripken's consecutive games streak or Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak? Was Walter Johnson the greatest pitcher ever? Will the Red Sox ever win the World Series again? As the season goes on, the memories always come back to you. Since I'm only twenty-one, I can't remember Bobby Thompson's famed "shot heard round the world." Nor can I recall Roger Maris' 61st home run in 1961. I can still picture in my mind, though, Kirk Gibson's game winning homer in Game One of the 1988 World Series, and I still haven't stopped rejoicing over Bill Buckner's costly error in the '86 Series that enabled the Mets to capture the title.
During the wintertime, these wonderful feelings are swept aside. Sure, the sports fan has hockey and football to keep him going, but somehow they don't seem to measure up. Perhaps it's the charm of the game. Every other sport has some sort of regulation size playing field. In the NFL, every field has a distance of 100 yards between its two end zones. Every NHL rink is 200 x 85 feet. In ballparks across America, a number of distinct qualities separate the stadiums from one another. Only in Fenway Park will you find the 'Green Monster' in left field. When at a game you hear the constant whine of airplane engines, its obvious that you're at Shea, watching the New York Mets. Americans have always realized that along with the warm spring sun, baseball keeps coming back to us.
James Earl Jones may have put it best in the film Field of Dreams. "The one constant through all the years… has been baseball," he said. "America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past… It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again…" This gives us an excellent idea of our nation's relationship to its pastime.
This past October, New York once again found itself to be the baseball center of the world. The Subway Series fascinated the city's population. We watched intently as Piazza, Leiter, and Alfonzo of the Mets attempted to prevent Williams, Jeter, and Rivera of the Yanks from winning their third straight World Series crown. Forty-five years earlier, the Yankees' Mantle, Berra, and DiMaggio, battled Koufax, Snider, and Campanella of the Brooklyn Dodgers for the championship. The Dodgers would win their only Brooklyn Championship that year, and as most people know, the Yankees are still the defending champs.
The last play I saw ended with Mike Piazza's long fly ball to center field at Shea Stadium, as it dropped into the glove of the Yanks' Bernie Williams. As a Mets fan, I dreaded the upcoming off-season, knowing it would be filled with so many questions surrounding the Mets' inability to pull it off.
Well, it's April now, and the winter wasn't that horrible after all. So as the great Brooklyn native Walt Whitman once said, "Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our closed rooms... The game of ball is glorious."