04.02.07 5:00 AM CDT
• Sports
• Leopold Froehlich
Today is the best day of the year. For baseball fans, opening day is our Easter, our Passover, our Satya Yug. A full banquet of 162 games stretches out before us. Rogers Hornsby had it right when he said: “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
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Comments on this entry:
Baseball is not Basketball, but it is a pasttime. As far as baseball can go, I will always root for three teams: one, the Houston Astros. Two, the Philadelphia Phillies, and three, The Athletics. As far as the As can go, even this far away from Philadelphia, I still believe that dugouts are inessential. Likewise even backstops when you are dealing with professional players. Ultimately, real men play in sandlots. Why not each team donate to the vastly overdeveloped ecosystems in cities by restoring the neighborhood sandlot? Tear down those condemned buildings, forget gentrifying that warehouse, and spare us from another leaky crumbly condo conversion and tear it down. Leave us some breathing room, so that everyone who cares about baseball doesn't have to move to Seattle but wish they lived in Baltimore. And when the sandlots are constructed to regulation distance, we won't even need bleachers. A hot dog vendor, a nearby cornerclub, and an open firepit for grilling and BBQ would restore the tradition of local rubs and sauces. Who says Texas has the best? I still think Canadian rubs are good, and Northeast BBQ sauce gives Jack Daniel's a run for his money anyday. My production company would be a success if every town simply took the initiative on their own to do this. Hef would find a remarkable new way to see the United States before he dies: he could take public transportation like all the cool people, quietly show up and the games, have a hot dog, a beer, and look around and the openness. The sheer joy of standing whil watching a sandlot game is immense, and future generations deserve to have that breather. In the sandlot, it's always the seventh inning stretch.