Eric Mayer

Byzantine Blog



Home
Get Email Updates
Cruel Music
Diana Rowland
Martin Edwards
Electric Grandmother
Jane Finnis
jimsjournal
Keith Snyder
My Incredibly Unremarkable Life
Mysterious Musings
Mystery of a Shrinking Violet
Mystery*File
Rambler
The Rap Sheet
reenie's reach
Thoughts from Crow Cottage
rhubarb
This Writing Life
Woodstock's Blog
Email Me

Admin Password

Remember Me

1482017 Curiosities served
Share on Facebook

Opening Day!
Previous Entry :: Next Entry

Read/Post Comments (5)

I love baseball's opening day. It's like being able to open a favorite book again every spring, knowing that it will be exactly the same as the first time you read it but completely different too.

Photobucket Not everyone likes baseball, understandably. A lot of the story is written in box scores which are probably as difficult to decipher as ancient Greek poetry if you aren't a baseball fan but beautiful and full of music and meaning if you know the language and the rules.

Box scores and other baseball statistics are about the only numbers that I've ever been able to bear. I could never sit still for long division, let alone algebra. Calculus? What's that? Sudoku? You've got to be kidding! But tell me that new Yankee Mark Teixeira's line last year was .308/.410/.552 and you've grabbed my interest.

Yes, I'm a Yankees fan. I began following them when Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris (the M&M boys) were chasing Babe Ruth's homerun record. Those two were like Superman and Batman. What does a kid in grade school know about buying championships? Besides, throughout the sixties the Yankees were awful. They finished last. Even with Mantle and Maris on the team. Of course players get old but what does a teenager know about getting old?

I spent endless hours playing Strat-O-Matic Baseball, throwing dice and consulting the long columns of numbers on the game cards, trying to make my Yanks perform the way teams of superheros are supposed to. I didn't have much success. Even playing solitaire one's conscience will only allow for so much cheating. I guess I should have put poor old Mickey on steroids by giving him extra rolls of the dice.

But every season the book opened again, with a chance for a better ending. And better endings finally did come along, although not until the late seventies. Sure, I had the pleasure of watching the Yankees win some championships in the seventies, but I was entitled. I deserved every cent George Steinbrenner spent on the team. As a young man I suffered for my team!

Who can say how it will all come out this time? I'll know in October.



Read/Post Comments (5)

Previous Entry :: Next Entry

Back to Top

Powered by JournalScape © 2001-2010 JournalScape.com. All rights reserved.
All content rights reserved by the author.
custsupport@journalscape.com