Playing six or seven games a week
From late March to last day of September.
Omitting the exhibition season and possible playoffs
Including the World Series.
That few players, relatively, ever play in.
Major league baseball.
A dream of every kid who played it,
So they used to say.
(Maybe not so much now with so much else from which to choose.)
Life, goes the adage, is like baseball.
Day in, day out. You play to win.
To keep doing it.
Players and coaches together for months on end,
In clubhouse, on the plane, on the road,
And sometimes half the time.
They have been playing professionally this game
Since 1869. More than a century and a half.
Once the players were as White as their course woolen uniforms.
And not until 1947, 22 years short of the century of professionalism
Were players of color allowed.
No. 42 Jackie Robinson was the first
Today the league is as international with players from
Central and South America and the Caribbean as well as
Korea and Japan,
The game remains the same. Roughly.
One diamond. Four bases.
Nine innings. 27 outs per side.
One mound. One batter’s box.
Two dugouts.
Twenty-six players to begin the season.
Up to 40 after September, the pennant stretch you see.
15 position players.
Hitters. Fielders. And a couple of catchers.
10 or 11 pitchers – five starters,
plus long relievers, set-up guys and of course the closers.
You can never have enough pitching.
So goes the saying.
Every ballpark is different.
No court or gridiron.
The outfield is as deep – or as shallow — as the owners want to make it.
Every park has its fans.
People with season ticket holders
And those watching their first major league game.
Bringing their glove along just in case a foul ball,
Or better yet a homer is hit their way.
Major league baseball.
On television, yes.
On radio, sure – the best way to catch a game.
Baseball is pastoral. Its pace evokes its origins.
Suitable for storytelling. Between innings, between batters and
pitching changes, of course.
Baseball is like life, or is it the other way, around?
Baseball is there.
162 games a year.