The box score is clean, the standings tied. Each roster trimmed with the 25 best, thoroughly selected and bred, waiting for the gates to open, each city with millions waiting for the same. Empty houses where snow and rain gathered for months on end are once again pollinated with buzzing crowds. In the middle, the grass is creased with military precision, foul lines dropped straighter than a comebacker line drive off the black burn lines of Louisville. The diamond opens its arms, from foul line to foul line, welcoming the white hide and red stitches to land anywhere, just to know that it’s back.
Hope arrives, in the form of nine empty spaces on a scoreboard. Nine stanzas waiting to be filled with poetry. Suicide squeeze sonnets. Perfect meters of perfect games. Dimaggio’s fifty-six line epic. Pining again for titles like Tinker, Evers, and Chance, turning pages of double plays for years on end, until the final paragraph lands on a plaque in Cooperstown.
It’s a limitless game. In theory, it could go on forever. It has no overtimes, no stopwatches, no quarters comprising a whole. There’s no taking knees to run out the clock, no last-minute fouls in a futile attempt to catch up. There is only each inning, each empty square on the scoreboard still full of promise until the last one is filled.
There is room for legends that grow in only the way that hand-me-downs can. It’s been said that Rube Waddell once randomly ran to a fire in a visitor’s city and joined the local firefighters in the effort, showed up late to the game, walked through the crowd, pitched a complete game. Saved a girl from drowning before a game another time, caught pneumonia and died. Or something like that. Bo Jackson hit a ball further than scientifically possible, but not further than baseball legend possible. It’s a sport that doesn’t matter whether it happened or it didn’t, just that it’s remembered in a way that makes the game more wonderful.
It’s all of us and all of our stories.
It’s full of tales of Paul Bunyans and an ox named Babe. Guys named Oil Can and Catfish, Mark “The Bird” Fidrych, Satchel, Wee Willie, Pee Wee, Chief Bender, and Al Kaline. The cream of its crop has included midgets, deaf mutes, and a one-armed pitcher. Its foundations were laid by barnstormers akin to a travelling circus act, built by the hands of coal miners, farmers, Ivy League dropouts and alcoholics from the hills of Arkansas. It was borne into the grind of the things that made America great in a time when America was defining its greatness. That greatness has endured through world wars, depressions, and political upheaval. It’s survived its own cheaters and liars, steroids and Black Sox, and has thrived on grace and goodness, Jackies and Clementes.
As much as it is a team endeavor, the game is still a solo effort. Every outcome begins with one man against another, pure in the way that few sports are. It is a sport built on failure, where no man has ever come close to winning half his battles over the course of a season. Where the best that ever played are only successful a third of the time. But the successes are enough to fuel the desire to come back again and again, in the hopes of that moment that every ballplayer has lived in their backyards or school playgrounds or city streets.
When everything and everyone depends on the bottom of the ninth, from the hopes of a city to the friends down the block. When the ball comes in, just that ball against the batter’s eye, spinning closer and closer until the wooden barrel meets it with a sweeter sound than a composer could ever find, and sends it into the night. And with it, that pure joy that has been chased for so long is untapped and allowed to run, spilling the grandest dreams of youth across the wet grass and the faces of your friends and that moment—just the chance of that moment—is why we all believe.
It’s why we wait and grow restless for the spring. It’s why we endure the swell of summer and the low anticipation of winter. It’s the embodiment of our own seasons and our own successes and failures and the knowing that there is always hope, that our innings are never over because there’s one more Gibson swing we have to give. Even in the bottom of the ninth, with a nearly empty stadium on a September night in last place, there’s still more around the corner.
The end is the beginning is the better season awaiting us all.
